Fri, 08 Jul 2005

The Culler of Money

I've laughed at this bozo in his question mark suit (as I'm sure most of my readers in the US have), but having read this I have a whole new respect for Mr. Lesko. Here's the tale that grabbed my eye:

Lesko wore his question marks whenever he appeared on Home Shopping. At some point, folks at the network tired of the interrogatories. In 2000, Lesko and his marketing expert, Kim McCoy, received a letter from the company.

As the 62-year-old Lesko remembers it, the ultimatum was simple: "It was the suit or me." ...

Lesko crunched the numbers. His stubbornness in wearing the suit, he figured, could cost him about $2 million.

"I thought about it hard," he remembers. "It took me so much guts to wear this. I finally got it on, and now they want me to take if off. And they’re holding millions of dollars over my head for it. . . . It’s an easy decision, intellectually. But emotionally, to your own [sense of] net worth to yourself, that’s all you have." He broke off his account with the network.

That's called being true to yourself, no matter how much it costs!

His admission that the contents of his books are mostly just gathered from public documents was refreshing, too. Honesty sometimes shows up in the strangest places, where you'd least expect it. But his commercials have never implied anything else: he is frankly selling his services as an aggregator and a huckster - and more power to him for it!

Late-Night Infomercial Clown Matthew Lesko Has Authored Nearly 100 Books On Government Grants. His Formula? "I Don’t Write," He Says. "I Plagiarize."

(link) [Baltimore City Paper]

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