Today is the birthday of the American showman and promoter, P.T. Barnum, in 1810.
Barnum had a genius for marketing anything people were willing to gawk at, whether it was a blind old woman, a dwarf, an elephant, a monkey head sewn to the tail of a fish, or a Swedish soprano.
Part of Barnum’s gift was to recognize that people need a story and a powerful name to spark their interest. Thus the blind old woman was amplified to majestic proportions, and in Barnum’s world was presented as not just an old woman, but George Washington’s former nurse. To make the math work, her age was said to be 161 years.
The dwarf was also age enhanced, transformed by Barnum from a 5 year old to an 11 year old, and re-named “General Tom Thumb”. Though he was actually from Connecticut, Barnum advertised him as being brought from overseas “at great expense.”
The elephant was dubbed “Jumbo” and actually was brought from overseas at great expense, and proved to be a huge moneymaker for Barnum, only to die tragically in a head on collision with a locomotive. The monkey/fish concoction was billed as “The Feejee Mermaid”, and soprano Jenny Lind won hearts as “The Swedish Nightingale”.
Barnum is said to have been an advocate of “humbug” as a useful tool for promoting various acts, meaning it’s OK to exaggerate and tell outright lies if the public gets its money’s worth and enjoys the show.
He made a lot of money and did extravagant things with it, including building a palace in Bridgeport, a Xanadu he named “Iranistan” (really!). Jenny Lind claimed that seeing an image of Iranistan is what made her want to come to America to be put on display by Barnum – his success was evident from the majesty of his home.
Never mind that Iranistan burned to the ground 9 years after he built it.
Barnum would feel right at home in the world of 2011, and would thrive online, a vast kingdom made up almost entirely of humbug. In fact, everything I know about P.T. Barnum came directly from Wikipedia. How much is true? Who cares?
Does the world need promoters?
Trail Baboon 
Sorry booners but I will start today with a Cliffy posting to beat all my previous extraneous ones. I attended Tufts University in Massachusetts. At one point Mr Barnum was on the board of directors of the college. Because of this I spent many hours in the Barnum Biology building.
Those of you who are aware of college mascots will know my alma mater as the Tufts Jumbos. Not only did we adopt the pachyderm as our symbol, but his stuffed skin was in the lobby of the Bio building.Legend had it that a coin left in Jumbo’s trunk led to good exam grades. Now PT was not only a great promoter, but he spread his influence around. Jumbo’s skin went to us in Medford, but his skeleton was donated to the Museum of Natural History in NY.
The lobby was fascinating because it was decorated with lots of old Jumbo info. He was the first corporate mascot to be so promoted. My favorite was the Jumbo trading cards that came as a premium with spools of thread. So many students pulled on Jumbos tail that it regularly fell off and was moved to a display case in the library.
When I was a junior, the biology building burned down. As a bio major I realized that the life’s work of many of my specimen -collecting, documenting professors was lost.It was bizarre to watch the tv coverage. As the large building blazed, microphones were thrust in the face of stunned academics and the questions was asked, “How do you feel about the loss of Jumbo?”
Indeed, the elephant was gone. All that remains on campus is the tail preserved in the library. The Tufts teams are still known as the Jumbos but I think they would be more appropriately known as the Tufts tails.
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Great story, Beth-Ann!
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B-A – that’s a GREAT BIG CLIFFY for you!! thanks, very interesting!
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Great story BA! Just catching up as I’ve been sitting (or more accurately- chasing little toddlers) by the great Atlantic Ocean. The ocean puts it all into perspective for me. There’s a lot of grand beauty in the vastness of the sea; and that is so gracefully and gently strokes the sand so that I can touch it in its most tame form is a never-ending wonder. Now I can teach my grandgirls the joy of it!
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Wonderful story, Beth-Ann.
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I’ve come to love the irrepressible spirit of the dreamer, the con man, the promoter, the storyteller, the liar, the romantic. I pity people who lack that sense of excitement and magic. The world they see is just the world they were given, and it doesn’t have to be that way! If my dad saw three deer along the road on the way to work, by the time he got to the office they were seven and maybe they were eight or nine when he was telling the story a week later.
This is the central issue in that book so beloved by book clubs, “The Life of Pi.” In the end, we can see the world in its most plain form or with fairy dust on it. There are at least two versions of our life stories, and the question becomes the decision between them: which do we prefer, the story with or without animals? “If we citizens do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imagination on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams.”
PT Barnum is wonderful because he exploits our need for romance while making us feel playful about it. We rush to the sign “This way to the Egress” and then laugh because we forgot “Egress” and “Exit” are the same thing. Barnum colludes with our own inner liar and gives us the con we already wanted. Garrison Keillor, his brow furrowed as he opens his eyes with astonishment, tells us “I keep telling you I am a liar, and you keep believing me.”
Maybe we need rules to keep the con men from having too much fun at our expense, but that isn’t the issue now. Don’t give me a flat world with predictable, flat people. Give me a world slightly drunk on its own delight in fantasy, dreams and unlimited possibilities.
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what a wonderful poetic response steve. thanks
i agree that storytelling is the spice of life. the world of promotion is so common out there that i an not sure old pt would even be noticed today. his manufactured wonders wuld go unnoticed with dancing with the stars on teh other channel. people spend hours a day being entertained today and don’t question because they don’t care. garrison does it so well that we have come to expect excellence in spinning the tale as part of the package. its been a while since we have had a monster version from out there in promo land. remember the magician who was going to make an airplane and the statue of liberty disapear? evil knevil jumping over the grand canyon on a pocket, don kings hair talking about mohammed ali and joe frazier. they may be out ther etoday promoting lady gagas underwear but don’t pay as much attention as i once did.
beth ann nice opening. go jumbo’s
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Is anyone else hearing tunes from The Music Man this morning?
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Oh yeah!
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“Flim Flam Man” starring George C. Scott.
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George C Scott played great con men. I saw him in LA in about 1978 in the Moliere play about the con man-Tartuffe, I think. It was great and was the first professional play production I saw.
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Good connection, and such an appropriate one from you!
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Meant to go with The Music Man. WordPress being obstinate today.
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my Mom used to say that her grandfather and his boys (her uncles) were “horse traders” which i think meant that they were not always dealing in absolute truths. my Mom got this trait to a certain extent also – exaggeration was her mode. while i don’t trust folks who embellish, i enjoy them, as long as i know that they know that i know.
happy day to All
Alba was still calling a bit for Terra and Freya yesterday but today was just interested in eating – and it sounds like they are doing well in their new pasture with their kind new owner.
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biB-I did not see Terra and Freya with their hooves out trying to hitch a ride north from Decorah on either Saturday or Sunday. Did see a lot of freshly baled hay in the fields, so am hoping they will be well provided for.
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sorry, OT and then i’ll shut up 🙂
MIG – ha! they did run thru the electric mesh fence the first evening (a typical goat-thing to do) and hoofed it down a gravel road a bit, yelling pretty loudly i gather. but now are used to the fence and treat it respectfully. their pasture has been unused for a number of years so they have all kinds of delights to chew on – woody and non –
Alba and T make hardy, strong and good-natured Girls. (with big bazongas too)
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I find myself wondering what I would have done had I seen them. I feel I could possibly have apprehended one of them, but as a team, I’m sure they would have left me on my backside.
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I agree with Steve – we need storytellers and folks to point out the magic in the world. It would be nice if fewer of them worked in politics…but that seems almost inevitable. Besides, after years and years in the theater, I can’t fuss to much about P.T. and his ilk – too many years of convincing people that a bit of canvas and pine board was a mansion or a forest or…
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I tend to like it when people let the greatness of something speak for itself without a lot of hype or words.
But, on the other hand, most of us promote things frequently…for instance, any time I tell somebody about a good book, I’m promoting that book. And I appreciate when people tell me about something good…food, books, etc. So maybe I appreciate that sort of friendly promotion but don’t like over-hyped attempts to sell me something, or when people go on and on about how great something is when I should be able to see it for myself (puts me in mind of a scenic walk I went on with somebody who felt he had to keep a conversation going…when I would stop to gaze at something, appreciating it in silence, he would rattle on about how pretty it was, etc.until I wanted to scream at him–I just wanted to look at it and feel its beauty without someone yammering on and on about it). Don’t like salespeople who don’t know when to shut up, either. I’ve known some Shaklee and Amway salespeople in the past and those folks could turn every conversation into a sales pitch for some product.
The family I grew up in now has a sort of “anti-promotion” thing about good food. If it’s especially good, we say (for example) “That is Terrible Pie” hoping that others will believe us and not eat it, thus leaving more for us. It’s kind of strange how I understood this the first time I heard it, but when I tried it on other people, they totally didn’t get it. I guess you need some sort of strange sense of humor to get it. That’s okay, if they think I really mean it is terrible, one of these days maybe I’ll get to eat the whole pie.
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Ha, ha, my first attempt at italics didn’t work very well. That was supposed to be italics just for the word “every” at the end of the second-to-last paragraph. Guess I need more practice.
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That’s not a new technique — it’s quite commonly used in our family. If someone sees me eating a particularly scrumptious morsel, I will say that it’s terrible and they definitely don’t want any as it is horrible — hoping of course, to keep more for myself!
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Good, I’m glad to hear we’re not the only ones who do that!
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Morning all… I have to say I’m in Steve and Anna’s camp today. Whatever you can say about P.T. Barnum, it seems as if he was always pretty upfront about his flamflammery. So does that make him an actual con man? I’m not sure, but I do love the imagination involved in his story!
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Related to yesterday’s topic: Daughter decided last night while we were waiting for fireworks to start that she needed to know how to write her name in cursive. She has been writing “fancy letters” but seemed keen on learning the “proper” way to write fancy – so she spent about 20 minutes last night practicing her name over and over. Connecting the V to the E was a little dicey for her seven-year-old fingers, but she got pretty good. She may well use it when she writes her (long hand) birthday thank you notes. 🙂
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No.
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Oppositional today, are we?
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Greetings! The slight exaggeration and romantic ideal of something promoted does make it fun; but too much of a good thing …. I don’t know. Being jobless again and now in the mode of self-promotion is a challenge for a shy, modest Minnesotan. I read these job descriptions of exciting positions that I’m probably quite capable of doing, but then I have second thoughts and doubt if I can pull off the dazzling organizational skills and high energy I once had in those jobs. My mind and skills have been dulled by boring, repetitious jobs that I’ve held lately for the sake of having a paying job. But hope springs eternal. If any baboons out there know of good administrative assistant type positions available in the northwest Minneapolis metro, please let me know. Thank you!
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I hope this goes where I intend it, as a reply to JiBL. I work at Graco in NE Mpls. and there is a current opening for an administrative assistant here. It’s a bit of a hike from Big Lake (about 40 miles, I think) but we also have divisions in Rogers and Anoka and it might make sense to get a foot in the door and wait/hope for an opening in one of those buildings. I think the link below will give you as much info as I could come up with, but if you’re interested I’ll be happy to help all I can. ~oc
https://www.hrapply.com/graco/JobSearch.app
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Networking at it’s finest! :-0
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Fingers crossed!
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That is so COOL!
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I’m ambivalent about this. Absolutely, we need promoters, dreamers, and storytellers; con men, liars, and cheaters, not so much. But nowadays, how do you tell which is which? Is there any harm in exaggerating the size of the fish you caught, the number of deer you saw or if you embellish a story a bit? Probably not, but I can do without the Tom Petters of the world, not to mention the internet scammers who are constantly on the prowl for someone to rip off. If I go to a sideshow at the Midway, it’s with the expectation that the Bearded Lady may not be what she appears to be; but how much fiction am I prepared to accept in a memoir? Do I turn down a plea for help from a stranger because appearances tells me he’s a bum, when in fact he may well have been beaten up? This actually happened to me once in San Francisco. A man, who had obviously been in a fight, asked me for money for a $15.00 bus ticket. He told me he was construction worker on his way home from work when he was assaulted and his pick-up truck with all of his tools stolen by a gang of thugs. He had no way of getting home. He would repay me the following day, he said, he just needed to get home. I walked to the bus station with him, bought his ticket and knew in my heart I had done the right thing whether or not he repaid me. He was so grateful that I was from Minnesota he said, someone from California would have never helped him. The following evening when I returned to my hotel room, there was a message that I needed to come to the reception desk. There was a thank you note, which I still have somewhere, and the $15.00. I’m ashamed to admit that I had my serious doubt that his story was true, but I wasn’t prepared to let that cynicism get in the way of doing the right thing. In the overall scheme of things those $15.00 I could live without, but they made a big difference to him. Had his story not been true, well that would have been on his conscience, not mine.
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Plainjane, I like all of what you said. As for feeling ashamed that you doubted that man’s story, I think that’s natural considering how many scammers (on many different levels – $15 for a bus ticket is not equal to Tom Petters’ doings) there are in this world. How wonderful that at least once, you were able to help an honest person who truly needed help
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I don’t need to write anything today – you just said it all! Well done, Plainjane!
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Good evening to all:
I’ve had a busy day getting caught up on my volunteer work. I think I have been flimflamed somehow into doing too much volunteer work. Maybe I flimflamed myself. I say no to all of this flimflam. If you want to be fooled and enjoy it, fine. Everybody enjoys a good joke. Nasty jokes are another thing.
It’s time to start seeing through some of the funny stuff. I read that Karl Rove thought it was great to tell poor people that there was a free meal at a Democratic meeting so that a bunch of these people would show up for the meeting and disrupt it. Now some of the great strategist that seem to be leading the Republicans are flimflaming people into thinking that big spenders are ruining our government while they do what they can to drain government finances to set up buget problems. That is the kind of flimflam that we don’t need.
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