"There's a Sucker Born Every Minute"

P.T. Barnum

Is the persona a person portrays indicative of their nature. It’s the old question of manifest content. Beware the smooth talker, whose soft spoken words may be a crude attempt to mask an exploitative nature. Is someone who speaks slowly actually five steps ahead? And what about the veneer of understanding often conveyed by the sage gaze, the nodding or the knowing smile which is really a smirk? The chipper old stock broker gives clients advice on their IRA, muttering to himself the phrase sometimes attributed to P.T. Barnum, “there's a sucker born every minute.” Politicos are notoriously Janus faced, making promises to one constituency that blatantly fly in the face of another.

read "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Francis Levy (with a painting by Hallie Cohen) in The East Hampton Star