CHOOSING COMPANIONS

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Seek out the acquaintance of people richer and more important than yourself and never take an interest in people who cannot do you any favors. This rule admits of no exceptions. When Henry Kissinger was secretary of state, he put it plainly
to a woman seated next to him at a Washingtondinner party. “A great nation,” he said, “is like an ambitious hostess. It cannot afford to invite unsuccessful people to its parties.” In the event that you become either rich or famous you may collect friends in the way that Nike acquires prize athletes or Philip II of Spain collected dwarfs.

OPTIMISM

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Your fellow countrymen like upbeat, happy people, and if you come up against bad news—a missing child, the loss of your right hand, your name left off the guest list for Barbra Streisand’s birthday party—imitate the television anchorpersons,
who manage to smile brightly when reading the reports of floods in Ohio or massacre in Rwanda. Never forget that you are always having fun. The attitude is especially important when being arraigned on charges of sodomy or tax evasion.

WORDS

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Except when filling out insurance claims or marking up the pages of a mail-order catalogue, give more thought to the adjectives than to the nouns. Words serve as set decorations. What matters is how they look and sound, not whatever it is that they supposedly mean.

The abstract word is always to be preferred to the concrete word, and the best of all possible words—”postmodern,” “amusing,” “enigmatic,” “global,” “empowering”—are those that can be addressed to both a foreign policy and the soup.

Proper usage depends upon prior recognition of the consensus already seated on the terrace or the lawn. In conservative company—at a yacht club in Orange County, California, say, or at a fund-raising dinner sponsored by the friends of Senator Orrin Hatch—the words, “sexist” and “racist” refer to people like Jesse Jackson or Woody Allen. Among avowed liberals gathered on West Seventy-ninth Street in Manhattan to celebrate a new book of essays by Gloria Steinem, the same two words describe the entire male populations of West Virginia, Arizona, and Tennessee.

CLICHES

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Make unsparing use of clichés. The empty word is the correct word. Contrary to the opinion of snobbish New York intellectuals, the placid murmur of cliché is always preferable to the expression of strong feeling, which is an embarrassment.


- Lewis Lapham, Lapham’s Rules of Influence: A Careerist’s Guide to Success, Status, and Self-Congratulation