Thursday, December 24, 2009

"dentist-chair bargaining" (introducing a new rubric: "quote unquote")

Introducing a new rubric, "quote unquote":

A miscellaneous selection of notable, quotable phrases (drawn mostly from writings about history, politics, or culture), new or old, as serendipity or whim may dictate.

Here's one for a start:
Bloom has summed up his approach to these situations as "dentist-chair bargaining"—in which the patient 'grabs the dentist by the balls and says, 'Now let's not hurt each other.'"
—from Noam Scheiber's portrait of the Obama administration's Ron Bloom, and his technique for tough negotiating in order to save jobs and industries in the face of management's efforts to cut losses by cutting jobs and closing factories: "Manufacturing Bloom: The proletarian schlub who might just save American industry," The New Republic, 2 Dec. 2009

Suggestions welcome.

[typos corrected]

No comments: