Peter Lowe has been staging these large-scale events since 1991. He’s a forty-two-year-old “success authority” based in Tampa, Florida. His parents were Anglican missionaries who gave up the material comforts of their middle-class life in Vancouver to work among the poor. Lowe was born in Pakistan and educated at the Woodstock School in Mussoorie, India, but he chose a different path. In 1984 he quit his job as a computer salesman and organized his first “success seminar.” The appearance of Ronald Reagan at one of these events soon encouraged other celebrities to endorse Peter Lowe’s work. In return, he pays them between $30,000 and $60,000 for a speech — for about half an hour of work. Among those who’ve recently joined Peter Lowe onstage are: George Bush, Oliver North, Barbara Walters, William Bennett, Colin Powell, Charlton Heston, Dr. Joyce Brothers, and Mario Cuomo.
Rachel Vasquez can hardly believe that she’s sitting among so many people who own their own businesses, among so many executives in suits and ties. The Little Caesars employees have seats just a few yards from the stage. They’ve never seen anything like this. Though the arena’s huge, it seems like these fourteen fast food workers from Pueblo can almost reach out and touch the famous people who appear at the podium.
“You are the elite of America,” Brian Tracy, author of The Psychology of Selling, tells the crowd. “Say to yourself: I like me! I like me! I like me!” He is followed by Henry Kissinger, who tells some foreign policy anecdotes. And then Peter Lowe’s attractive wife, Tamara, leads the audience in a dance contest; the winner gets a free trip to Disneyland. Four contestants climb onstage, dozens of beach balls are tossed into the crowd, the sound system blasts the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ USA,” and eighteen thousand people start to dance. Barbara Bush is next, arriving to “Fanfare for the Common Man,” her smile projected onto two gigantic television screens. She tells a story that begins, “We had the whole gang at Kennebunkport…”
When Peter Lowe arrives, fireworks go off and multicolored confetti drops from the ceiling. He is a slender, red-haired man in a gray, double-breasted suit. He advises the audience to be cheerful, to train themselves for courage, to feed themselves with optimism, and never quit. He recommends his tape series, “Success Talk,” on sale at the arena, which promises a monthly interview with “one of the most successful people of our time.” After a short break, he reveals what is ultimately necessary to achieve success. “Lord Jesus, I need You,” Peter Lowe asks the crowd to pray. “I want you to come into my life and forgive me for the things I’ve done.”
Lowe has broken from the Christianity of his parents, a faith that now seems hopelessly out of date. The meek shall no longer inherit the earth; the go-getters will get it and everything that goes with it. The Christ who went among the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, among lepers and prostitutes, clearly had no marketing savvy. He has been transfigured into a latter-day entrepreneur, the greatest superstar salesperson of all time, who built a multinational outfit from scratch. Lowe speaks to the crowd about mercy. But the worship of selling and of celebrity infuses his literature, his guest lists, his radio shows and seminars. “Don’t network haphazardly,” Peter Lowe preaches in his $19.95 Peter Lowe’s Success Yearbook. “Set goals to meet key people. Imagine yourself talking to them. Plan in advance what questions to ask them… When there is an important individual you want to network with, be prepared to say something insightful to them that shows you’re aware of their achievements… Everyone loves to receive a present. It’s hard to be resistant or standoffish to someone who has just given you a nice gift… Adopt the attitude of a superstar… Smile. A smile tells people you like them, are interested in them. What an appealing message to send!” These are the teachings of his gospel, the good news that fills arenas and sells cassettes.
As the loudspeakers play the theme song from Chariots of Fire, Lowe wheels Christopher Reeve onstage. The crowd wildly applauds. Reeve’s handsome face is framed by longish gray hair. A respirator tube extends from the back of his blue sweatshirt to a square box on his wheelchair. Reeve describes how it once felt to lie in a hospital bed at two o’clock in the morning, alone and unable to move and thinking that daylight would never come. His voice is clear and strong, but he needs to pause for breath after every few words. He thanks the crowd for its support and confesses that their warm response is one reason he appears at these events; it helps to keep his spirits up. He donates the speaking fees to groups that conduct spinal cord research.
“I’ve had to leave the physical world,” Reeve says. A stillness falls upon the arena; the place is silent during every pause. “By the time I was twenty-four, I was making millions,” he continues. “I was pretty pleased with myself… I was selfish and neglected my family… Since my accident, I’ve been realizing… that success means something quite different.” Members of the audience start to weep. “I see people who achieve these conventional goals,” he says in a mild, even tone. “None of it matters.”
His words cut through all the snake oil of the last few hours, calmly and with great precision. Everybody in the arena, no matter how greedy or eager for promotion, all eighteen thousand of them, know deep in their hearts that what Reeve has just said is true — too true. Their latest schemes, their plans to market and subdivide and franchise their way up, whatever the cost, the whole spirit now gripping Colorado, vanish in an instant. Men and women up and down the aisles wipe away tears, touched not only by what this famous man has been through but also by a sudden awareness of something hollow about their own lives, something gnawing and unfulfilled.
Moments after Reeve is wheeled off the stage, Jack Groppel, the next speaker, walks up to the microphone and starts his pitch, “Tell me friends, in your lifetime, have you ever been on a diet?”
II/meat and potatoes
5/why the fries taste good
TO REACH THE J. R. SIMPLOT PLANT in Aberdeen, Idaho, you drive through downtown Aberdeen, population 2,000, and keep heading north, past the half dozen shops on Main Street. Then turn right at the Tiger Hut, an old hamburger stand named after a local high school team, cross the railroad tracks where freight cars are loaded with sugar beets, drive another quarter of a mile, and you’re there. It smells like someone’s cooking potatoes. The Simplot plant is low and square, clean and neat. The employee parking lot is filled with pickup trucks, and there’s a big American flag flying out front. Aberdeen sits in the heart of Bingham County, which grows more potatoes than any other county in Idaho. The Simplot plant runs twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and ten days a year, turning potatoes into french fries. It’s a small facility, by industry standards, built in the late 1950s. It processes about a million pounds of potatoes a day.
Inside the building, a maze of red conveyer belts crisscrosses in and out of machines that wash, sort, peel, slice, blanch, blow-dry, fry, and flash-freeze potatoes. Workers in white coats and hard hats keep everything running smoothly, monitoring the controls, checking the fries for imperfections. Streams of sliced potatoes pour from machines. The place has a cheerful, humble, Eisenhower-era feeling, as though someone’s dream of technological progress, of better living through frozen food, has been fulfilled. Looming over the whole enterprise is the spirit of one man: John Richard Simplot, America’s great potato baron, whose seemingly inexhaustible energy and willingness to take risks built an empire based on french fries. By far the most important figure in one of the nation’s most conservative states, Simplot displays the contradictory traits that have guided the economic development of the American West, the odd mixture of rugged individualism and a dependence upon public land and resources. In a portrait that hangs above the reception desk at the Aberdeen plant, J. R. Simplot has the sly grin of a gambler who’s scored big.