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The Book of Tells (Peter Collett)[unlocked]

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THE BOOK OF TELLS<br />

Tony Blair was having trouble persuading Labour<br />

members that it would be necessary for Britain to support<br />

the United States if it decided to go to war against Iraq,<br />

and it was thought that Bill Clinton would be able to bring<br />

the doubters into line behind Blair. <strong>The</strong> speech was vintage<br />

Clinton - he flattered the delegates, exposed both sides <strong>of</strong><br />

the argument and showed that he was fallible. But more<br />

importantly, he interspersed his remarks with Clintonian<br />

tells - that upward-looking smile, the magisterial wave,<br />

the carefully timed hesitations to remind everyone that<br />

politics was about making tough decisions. When he said<br />

that war is indiscriminate - 'I do not care how precise your<br />

bombs and your weapons are, when you set them <strong>of</strong>f<br />

innocent people will die' - he did his trademark lip-bite<br />

tell, reminding the gathering that he was a man <strong>of</strong> feeling.<br />

At the end <strong>of</strong> the speech there was thunderous applause.<br />

When conference members were interviewed on TV afterwards,<br />

they were all ecstatic - MPs <strong>of</strong> every political hue<br />

said that Clinton was on their side. <strong>The</strong>re was <strong>of</strong> course no<br />

mention <strong>of</strong> the various oratorical devices that he'd used,<br />

even though it was these devices that had electrified the<br />

conference, rather than anything Clinton had said. <strong>The</strong><br />

delegates thought they were responding to his arguments,<br />

but they weren't. <strong>The</strong>y were reacting to the tells that he<br />

had produced, those little signals that he'd marshalled to<br />

show that he was thoughtful and sensitive, a man <strong>of</strong><br />

political conviction with strong emotions. It was the tellsthe<br />

medium, not the message - that had won the day.<br />

In Chapter 1 we saw that the word tell comes from<br />

poker, where it is used to describe any action or speech<br />

mannerism that reveals what kind <strong>of</strong> hand someone is<br />

holding or what kind <strong>of</strong> strategy they're using. <strong>The</strong> ensuing<br />

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