When hotshot salesman Ricky Roma first encounters his mark James Lingk in the classic 1992 move Glengarry Glen Ross he smoothly plays his hand as a consummate professional daring to take risks.
“I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion. If everyone thinks one thing, then I say bet the other way,” says Roma, played brilliantly by cinema legend Al Pacino.
For Ricky Roma the art of contrarism is setting up a man for a score while creating the illusion he is just a swell personable guy. It's just business. In fact Lingk clearly likes the smooth- talking shark, even when he finds out later he's been duped.
Well played contrarism is not only a valid tactic for professionals to use to get what you desire and need but when played right they will have room for a classy exit that leaves plenty of smiles and respect.
Too bad there are shocking examples of contrarism that lack the clever and enviable sophistication and class exhibited by Ricky Roma. Sadly, this is the cynical and nasty side, and it too often comes from the grand old and once honourable profession of journalism, especially when it comes to the passing of national icons.
Last week National Post columnist Christie Blatchford engaged in the ugly side of contrarism with her take on the death of NDP leader Jack Layton. While most Canadians were genuinely moved by the opposition leader's passing, Blatchford saw fit to offer readers a cruel cynical turn on the mass outpouring of affection and grieving for the late NDP leader.
In it, she takes a side-swipe at the CBC's Evan Solomon for riding on the wave of mass grieving. For some journalists, contrarism even means swallowing your own, like a pack of ravenous piranhas.
But she reserves her best shots for the farewell letter Layton left the nation, suggesting it doesn't really pass a fully honourable righteous test because a few others may have had a hand in it.
My guess is that Blatchford wants readers to believe that even on deathbeds public figures must, in order to properly pass the test for scribbling contrarians, somehow do these things themselves, and damn the pain and the grim reaper knocking on the door.
“Rather, it's remarkable because it shows what a canny, relentless, thoroughly ambitious fellow Mr. Layton was. Even on Saturday, two days before he died, he managed to keep a gimlet eye on all the campaigns to come,” wrote Blatchford. “The letter is vainglorious too. Who thinks to leave a 1,000-word missive meant for public consumption and released by his family and the party mid-day, happily just as Mr. Solomon and his fellows were in danger of running out of pap? Who seriously writes of himself, ‘All my life I have worked to make things better?”'
It makes one wonder if Blatchford seriously thought Layton's motive was to leap into the future, past his demise, and read the headlines with a big smile on his face and somehow gauge the public response from the pearly gates.
If so, then poor old Jack must have been in far worse mental shape than anyone could have ever imagined.
But hold on. There is more. It comes across the newsroom of the National Post. Blatchford gets a cheerleading boost from colleague Jonathan Kay who presents his followup piece under the ultimate backslapping “look how great we journalists are” headline, “Who has the guts to call out Layton's cynical manifesto? Blatchford, of course.”
To buttress his point Kay resurrects a vitriol-fuelled column written by former colleague Peter Scowen in 2000 during the country's mourning over the death of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. In it, Scowen makes sport of Trudeau's son Justin for what he perceived to be an over-the-top embarrassing eulogy. He did this of course while the rest of the country was either genuinely moved or just quietly wincing and leaving these things alone.
But contrarians being contrarians have this knack in attempting to be so different, so out there in a special place reserved just for them and all their self-righteous musings, that decency, respect and the ability to just shut up will elude them all the way to the gates of their very own maker.
OK, they are columnists. It is their job to offer readers their own different and unique perspectives. But where and when does one draw the line? Methinks it's quite simple.
They can just clamp the old pie hole when all the lovey-dovey stuff in the public becomes a tad too much. They may not like the attention this guy or gal gets, and all the goo-goo ga-ga gushing that seemingly flows out of control, but do they really need to spew venom on situations that otherwise demand a greater, kinder reflection? Quiet respectful courtesy is the better order of the day, at least until the prevailing public mood has run its course. But if that is too daunting then scribbling contrarians can opt for isolation, in the crashing quiet loneliness of their own self-made despair.
It may not be as fun as a bout of scribbling contrarism for public consumption but they may at last get to know the old adage, “When you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all.”
