What is a snake oil salesman?
Snake oil salesman refers to someone trying to get you to buy into something that is supposed to help or do something good but really is nothing at all like that. In fact, it may even be harmful. The old medicine salesmen used to sell snake oil as a curative, as a health benefit, when it of course did nothing of the sort. Snake oil is a fake, it doesn,t do what the guy says it will. They are like those guys on infomercials you see on late night tv. Those people are the modern equivalent of the snakeoil salesmen, the old traveling medicine men. And key to the whole thing is that the salesman knows very well that what he is selling is completely useless, and even harmful. It isn’t like he is naive or misguided, he knows the line he is feeding is bull. A lot of politician would make good snakeoil salesmen, I think.
