The skilful play on people's weakness, their snobbery, their need to feel special, in order to manipulate them to one's own advantage, still played out in boardrooms throughout the world, has never been put better than in Lion Feuchtwanger's Jew Suss:
"If he Karl Rudolf [regent of Württemberg] wanted to obtain a real concession from Marie Auguste [his co-regent], he annoyed her in matters of etiquette, disputing one of her titles, perhaps, or sending her a subaltern instead of the usual staff officer to act as her guard, or tormenting her darling, the fine, fashionable librarian. When she protested, he demanded some political concession as the price of rectifying these delicate matters."
"If he Karl Rudolf [regent of Württemberg] wanted to obtain a real concession from Marie Auguste [his co-regent], he annoyed her in matters of etiquette, disputing one of her titles, perhaps, or sending her a subaltern instead of the usual staff officer to act as her guard, or tormenting her darling, the fine, fashionable librarian. When she protested, he demanded some political concession as the price of rectifying these delicate matters."
3 comments:
Forget the boardroom - that pretty much sums up my bedroom!
That can't have been an easy admission to make.
Surely that's why he made it anonymously. (Must be a he - a woman wouldn't admit it at all.)
Post a Comment