The grift that keeps on grifting

From a November 29 post by Andrew Sullivan in The Daily Beast:

I am now on a new drug called Egrifta which targets HIV-related lipodystrophy, i.e. strange fat accumulation around your internal organs, by triggering an increase in your own body's production of growth hormone.

 

Egrifta (“eh-GRIF-tuh”) injectable prescription medicine from Theratechnologies. Generic name: tesamorelin.

 

Interesting name, Egrifta. What’s the story behind it? I have no idea. But let’s consider:

Grifter: “Confidence trickster,” 1906, carnival and circus slang, probably an alteration of grafter (see graft (n.2); also cf. grift). Gradually extended to “any non-violent criminal.” (Online Etymology Dictionary)

 

 

The Grifters (1990)

 

Grift: (slang) 1. Money made dishonestly, as in a swindle. 2.A swindle or confidence game. (American Heritage Dictionary, Fourth Edition)

 

 

Griftopia, by Matt Taibbi (Random House, 2010)

 

With all that rich source material, you’d think the marketing copy could have written itself. But the cupboard is bare—no tagline, no ads. So let’s, as a public service, fix that.

Maybe a sly double-entendre:

• What’ve you got to lose?

Or a cruder double-entendre:

• Skimming the fat since 2011.

Or we could really get into the carnival spirit:

• See the bottle? Under the middle shell. Watch the middle shell. Keep watching the middle shell. Don’t take your eyes off the middle shell. Where’s the bottle now?

On the other hand, maybe we should take a closer look at that “e” prefix:

• I write to you from exile, the daughter of a deposed Nigerian prince…

Eh, griftas—over to you!

UPDATE via email from Dan Freiberg: “You take it. It takes you.”

Comments

[john burke]

When pool hustlers were testing how much a fish might be good for, one line they'd use was "Make it easy on yourself."

[Nancy Friedman]

@John: That'll work very nicely.