Barnumism

showmanship or any activity taking advantage of people’s credulity or desire for sensational entertainment, as practiced by P. T. Barnum (1810-91).

See also: Behavior

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(42.) "The Latest Barnumism," Fayetteville Observer, 16 July 1855; "Baby Shows," New York Times, 30 July 1870.

"Infantile specimens": showing babies in nineteenth-century America

As relayed by John Lahr in a profile of Mamet that appeared in The New Yorker, a colleague referred to his "intellectual Barnumism" and once told another interviewer, "[Mamet] would be talking--`As Aristotle said, blah blah.' Or, `I was rereading Kierkegaard the other day.' I remember saying, `Aristotle never said that!

Mamet goes wildeing

"Can it be," a reviewer asks, "that 'Barnumism' has been spreading silently and widely among us, and that in the domain of art the pitiable trickeries of the showman are taking the place of painstaking endeavour and conscientious work?" (8) Evidence of the incorporation of Barnumism within British culture was, however, plentiful.

The Egyptian Hall and the platform of transatlantic exchange: Charles Browne, P. T. Barnum, and Albert Smith