The experiment of enlivening the fair by the process called "Barnumizing" has been a success. With the daily concerts in the big buildings and the nightly shows in the lagoon and plaza, the gate receipts have steadily grown.
The men on whose advice the Fair has been Barnumized are happy. Every one of them wears a sort of I-told-you-so expression. They point to the crowds and say: "Low railroad fares and an attractive program will bring the people every time. But you can't get them here to listen to dreary speeches and still drearier classical music."
1922 — "Reinhardt at Salzburg", The New York Times, 3 September 1922:
There is nothing unusual at first appearance of this man who Barnumized the Classics and shook them and modern stage production into a new vitality.
In 1841 Barnum bought Scudder’s American Museum, a dusty jumble of artifacts and oddities across from St. Paul’s on the southeast corner of Broadway and Ann Street, now the site of an office building. Almost overnight he Barnumized it into the most-visited attraction in the country.
Verb: "to dumb down, cheapen, or vulgarize something, especially to create entertainment that appeals to coarse or unsophisticated tastes"[edit]
1854 — "Telegraphic Advertising", The Baltimore Sun, 19 April 1854:
The design is evidently to Barnumize the Crystal Palace, and give New York a lift, by a general levy upon the further credulity of the whole people of the United Stales.
1871 — "The Round Table", The Congregational Review, Volume 11, Number 59, May 1871:
And may a church rush into the race of money-making and all manner of devices for which the unscrupulous employ? May a church Barnumize itself with lotteries, theatricals, and all that sort of thing?
Yet doubtless out of this taste has grown that great series of universal Exhibitions which may designate the latter half of the nineteenth century as the era of Exhibitions, and so far as we know they are indeed the most noticeable feature of it. Commencing with the fulfillment of the idea, appropriated and improved upon by Prince Albert in the fairy palace of 1851, continued in Paris, repeated in London, and imitated in Vienne, they promise to stretch out till "the crack of doom." Already America has made one or two faint attempts to carry out something worthy of the name, and now projects one of gigantic magnitude in one of the coming years of this decade. In point of size it is perhaps likely she will excel all former ones, but she is almost equally certain to vulgarize or Barnumize to a certain extent the idea so poetically carried out in Hyde Park, and so worthily continued in the other historic capitals of Europe.
As the tomb of the brave men who went down to death in the harbor of Havana, the Maine has become a sacred national possession, and to have made it a source of government revenue by selling it for exhibition purposes would have been a profanation of patriotic memories. Happily public sentiment has not been Barnumized to a point where the suggestion could be seriously entertained.
1983 — John Husar, "Collins, LaPaglia save fight for ring", Chicago Tribune, 19 March 1983:
Kushner expects his boxers to make nasty remarks, scripted or otherwise, to Barnumize their sport in the manner of Bob Luce's version of wrestling promising gore for the paying fools.
Verb: "to promote with bombast, exaggeration, or outright falsehood; to hype or sensationalize"[edit]
They went to work deliberately to Barnumize their prospective candidate. No prima donna was ever more thoroughly exploited by her Hebrew impresario. The papers swarmed with anecdotes, incidents, sayings. Nothing was too unimportant, and the new commander-in-chief pulled on his boots by telegram from Maine to California, and picked his teeth by special dispatch from the Associated Press.
Miss Wills went to the Riviera to play tennis. Mlle. Lenglen went to the Riviera to play tennis. But you would never guess it. Their match has been so Barnumized that for three weeks prior to a test of tennis skill they have been judged not on a basis of how they play tennis, but what they say to the reporters and how well they play the roll of prima donnas.
Therefore, paving every step of the way with carefully planned media events, Barnum--with Lind's complicity--framed this ambitious, strong-willed, and wealthy singer with a mythical aura of humility, artlessness, and sentimentality. […] A Lind concert became an historic opportunity not only to hear a brilliant singer but also to witness the perfect embodiment of sentimental womanhood with whom the American middle class could identify. Indeed, Barnum made it impossible to isolate the singer's performance from her offstage identity. No one could experience the singer without encountering the Barnumized celebrity.
Verb: "to obtain money through fraudulent or deceitful means; to swindle or con"[edit]
The showing up of poor old Major Walter's literary and advertising feats is much less to the point as the value and genuineness of the portraits than such a criticism as the above of the works themselves. It would appear that, bunglingly as the Britisher's attempted Barnumizing of the relics has been done, they are themselves likely to remain topics of dispute and discussion longer than did the mermaid of the wooly horse.
It is pretty generally recognized now that the alleged contest between these men was a huge money making game from end to end, engineered by a parcel of sharpers who coaxed and badgered the superannuated, "logy," and physically degenerated Jeffries into a Barnumizing job on the public, one smelling of a swindle through and through.
Looking in retrospect over his career, old P. T. Barnum was equally frank, but he had a way of making people unaware of the fact that they were being buncoed while the buncoing was going on. And the Barnumizing operation of extracting money from the curious will be more successful today if it is made less palapably[sic] painful.
Verb: "to spread inaccurate or false information"[edit]
1935 — Mrs. Walter Ferguson, "Being Unhappy", The Pittsburgh Press, 23 August 1935:
The psychiatrists are getting beyond their depth when they begin computing feminine unhappiness. So when we read that some professor finds 98 per cent of us drooping with sorrow, I think we may safely charge him with Barnumizing.
1958 — "Press Score on Soviet; Research Group Says Science Gains Are 'Barnumized'", The New York Times, 10 September 1958:
The American press was criticized in a Congressional document today for placing too much reliance on "Barnumized" accounts of Soviet scientific progress.
Verb: "to seek or attract attention, especially through ostentation"[edit]