Donald Trump was on SportsCenter last night, talking about George Steinbrenner, and Trump was recounting a long-winded story about The Apprentice that had as much (or more) to do with his own ego than Steinbrenner's generosity, and I thought to myself, "Is this the apex of self-love? Could there be a more ego-weighted friendship in the history of American capitalism than that of Trump and Steinbrenner? When they went to dinner together, did they compete to see who could get more members of the waitstaff summarily fired?"
I find Trump to be one of 20th century America's greatest caricatures. It always amazes me to watch The Apprentice and realize that there are a whole generation of young aspiring blowhards who genuflect before him, who hear him utter things like, "Golf is one of our nation's fastest-growing sports," and find it edifying. How I feel about Trump is how I feel about self-promotion. So let me apologize in advance for the inevitable bombardment of the next few weeks: My book comes out very soon, and I received my first finished copy the other day, which is exhilarating and vaguely nauseating, and this means I have to spend the next several weeks unfurling my inner Trump.
Obviously, I intend this blog to be something more than a self-promotional tool, and I find myself to be pretty terrible at blatant self-promotion, anyway. I'm hoping to run a few excerpts on here, and to let the book speak for itself as much as possible, but let me point out two things, because this is a precarious business I work in, and sales do matter, and I am not very skilled in The Art of the Deal: 1.) There is now a Facebook group for Bigger Than the Game, and I'm hoping to at least attract enough people to form a quorum (or at least avoid embarrassment), so if you have 12 seconds to spare and can head over and click "Like," I'd be forever indebted. 2.) If you have friends who might be interested in a tome like this, please let them know or direct them to that little box to my right. If you'd like an autographed copy, or a signed bookplate to insert into your copy, just contact me directly (michael (at) michaelweinreb.com), and we'll get it done. If you are a media member/blogger and would like to talk with me or lobby for a free copy, contact me, or my publicist, Anne Kosmoski (Anne.Kosmoski (at) us.penguingroup.com).
Thanks. Now we can go back to talking about golf.
P.S. I've finally updated my website, as well. More TK.
3 comments:
Consider your book "Liked." And I'll certainly be both ordering a copy, and probably bugging you for an autograph. I assume I just buy it in one of the standard ways, and then contact you about where to send it and all that?
Anyway, I find your blog to be almost overwhelmingly content (as opposed to promotion), so I don't think you have to worry much about the ratio getting skewed.
As for Trump...it all seems so over-the-top that I'm not sure how much of it to take seriously. But I rather think it goes like this:
1. A person who thinks highly of themselves and says so.
2. A person who thinks highly of themselves and says so much that it's meant as a bit of a performance.
3. A person who thinks highly of themselves and says so to such an absurd degree that they forget they were originally doing it as a performance and no longer make any distinction between their persona and their person.
I felt, for a long time, that Trump was #2. Whether he was or not, I think he's #3 now. I think he's lived and breathed his originally quasi-tongue-in-cheek "I'm the best" personality that he no longer lapses out of it at any point.
Grr, typos. That should be "says so so much" and there should be a "for so long" after "personality."
Indeed, you can contact me directly about an autograph. I will return you a signed copy of The Art of the Deal.
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