pt barnum and trump.

Since I heard that Trump was going on FoxNews tonight to show his health to the nation, I thought of another story. P.T. Barnum started his career by selling ticket to see a lady he said was 161 years old and had been a nursemaid to George Washington. Truth was that she was a poor woman who was blind and a slave. Barnum rented her for the shows.

Word got around that it might not be real so Barnum staged an autopsy to prove she was 161.

No matter what Trump discovers tonight - which I’m sure he will be more perfectly healthy than anyone has ever bee - here’s the critical piece of the story:

The surgeon who performed the autopsy declared that it had been a hoax—Joice Heth was no older than eighty. But this news didn’t harm Barnum’s career; it made him. He played it for publicity, telling story after story to the New York press over the course of many months—Heth was actually still alive, the corpse had been a different woman, Barnum had been hoaxed, Barnum was the hoaxer. He understood how the new media worked better than almost anyone (at one point he was said to have twenty-six journalists on his payroll), and quickly realized that truth and trustworthiness weren’t the keys to his career; notoriety and the ability to supply an entertaining story were.

Phillips, Tom. Truth: A Brief History of Total Bullsh*t