When you have a few spare minutes, head on over to onegoodmove and check out this MSNBC video from the Abrams Report, called The Truth About Psychics. This video is in need of a good picking apart if I’ve ever seen one. I wouldn’t bother reading this until you’ve watched the video for yourself though, and reacted to it first in your own way, so you have something to compare against.
The first line I’d like to examine comes from Katie Couric at the very beginning, where she frames the piece not so subtly: “It may seem ridiculous, but psychics are cashing in…” Immediately, off the bat, you’re cleverly instructed that the piece you’re about to see, while serious, contains “ridiculous” elements - namely psychics. You’re not instructed why this might seem ridiculous. In fact, it’s a little more insidious than that. There is an air of camaraderie in her statement, a shared sense, a common ground that is immediately created. Even if you don’t think it’s ridiculous, you’re allowed or forgiven for thinking so. Which nets you in a web of complicity with what comes next.
The next interview, with a woman named Julia Marcelino talks about how a psychic knew a great deal of personal details about her, suggested she had a problem, offered to solve it for a cool $18,000, and Julia immediately wrote the check. As soon as that statement is made, the scene is cut and a new narrative begins. But, none of the important questions it raises are even addressed:
1) Why did the psychic know so much about her? If she knew so much, was there any truth to her statements of imminent danger?
2) This woman immediately wrote her a check for $18,000. How did that make her feel? She seemed to do it without hesitation - at least in the re-telling. After the check was handed over, what happened? Did the psychic make return visits? Did the woman at least feel safer and more at ease as a result? Was disaster averted?
3) Even if this was a completely fraudulent transaction and the psychic was a total scam artist, is there a chance this woman was actually helped? If she didn’t feel more at ease, maybe she learned a lesson about who to trust while she was vulnerable. Obviously these issues are too big to tackle in a short “news” segment.
The next part with Bill Stanton and “Miss Sarah” is also a complete gas. Now, this guy is supposed to be a “private investigator”, but clearly he is an actor. He is obviously trained in the witty on-screen banter and demeanor which you see him use later on opposite the show’s host (also see his fitted leather jacket, tanning-bed skin tone and perfectly polished accent). Secondly and more importantly, we have to look at the human transaction that this man is trying to accomplish. It seems to be his belief (or that of the show’s producers) that psychics are fake. So he sets out to find someone who proves that belief and makes a good screen presence as well.
How does he “prove” this woman is a fraud though? Only by entering into a fraudulent position himself. His gripe with her is that she is a scam artist. So somehow, his solution is to scam her. How warped is that of a way to interact with people? I seek real human interaction. I feel you don’t. So I compromise both myself and you in order to get back at you for the perceived slight. It cut’s off at the knees the legitimacy of his stance, which is supposed to be this hardline, rationalist, reality-based point of view - and betrays the emotional insecurity and internal predation these people are projecting outward. It’s the moral equivalent (albeit on a lesser scale) of a man who fervently believes that prostitutes are evil, so he goes out and rapes and murders them to teach them a lesson.
And why was there a camera in an ice bucket? What sense does that make?
So, does Miss Sarah seem like a scam artist? Of course, but you have no other way of possibly viewing the matter, based on the inside information you have that she has been fed phony information. Her repeating information that “God is telling her” sounds like the worst kind of crime, only because we know that God wouldn’t lie to us - that he is a good and just God. The inclusion of that quote is a subtle appeal to our underlying and largely unconscious Christian value system.
Immediately after that, the man starts fake crying. She’s faking him. He’s faking her. Who are we supposed to feel bad for here again? The situation has become even more absurd, more pointless and inhuman.
When the gig is revealed, and it’s announced that she’s actually on Candid Camera, Bill Stanton goes into this big monologue: “Sarah, don’t go that way. Sometimes you just gotta know when to raise the right flag and say ‘I’m sorry’.” Where does this guy get off moralizing to her? He should be apologizing to her, just as readily, for setting out to trick her, to trap her, to publicly humiliate her, and demean her entire profession, and then to make money off her through television and advertising. What she did to him was no less bad perhaps, but it was entirely more direct. She just asked him for the money, with the actual intention of playing along with his pain, and helping him through it. He instead constructed an elaborate game of moral high-ground, truth and lies to get off on some kind of weird self-righteousness kick, when all he really wanted out of it in the end was money for his television show. (He even admits later: “What I did is exactly what they did to me. They were coming after my pain, I was going after their greed.”)
The next clip is FANTASTICALLY IRONIC as well, where Julia Marcelino comes back to the fore, and instructs us sagely: “If you have problems or you’re vulnerable, go to your priest, go to your shrink, but do not give anybody any money.”
Wait one cotton-picking second! How can you go to a psychiatrist without giving them any money? Their rates border on the absurd just as much as a psychic’s would, perhaps even moreso because it societally sanctioned and nobody thinks twice about it. And a priest, well if you’re enough of a member of a congregation to feel comfortable asking a priest for help, then chances are you’ve been feeding him money through the collection plate as well. Her advice seems to fall flat on closer examination, while this issue of money is at the crux of the entire segment. We’re supposed to believe that these psychics are bad people because they ask for services in exchange for money - services which we may never even necessarily see or feel concretely. How does that make them the bad guy? There are countless businesses and corporations which do much the same thing each and every day.
I know I haven’t yet addressed the question of: are there psychics then that rip people off? Sure! Absolutely! But if that’s your question, here are some others for you: are there doctors that rip people off? Are there lawyers, politicians, business people that rip people off? Yes. Yes. Yes and yes. There are simply people who rip people off, and they cut across all races, religions, professions and what have you.
So what are we really looking at then here? What’s the game? What’s the intention? Well, it seems like we’re looking at yet another small attack on spirituality, especially of any alternative varieties. Another small incremental in-road has been made against the individual’s own ability and authority to effectively and intelligently choose their own spiritual paths, because such practices have been shown to be fraudulent and filled with danger. We’ve been allowed a guided foray into that world, shown how bad it is, and then offered the socially acceptable solutions of going to a priest or psychiatrist. Case closed.
What else do we learn? We learn in the post-segment wrap-up that alternative religion, psychics and individual spiritual exploration are still acceptable, but only when we view them as “entertainment.” If you recall, NBC (obviously affiliated with MSNBC) is the same station which plays the very popular television show “Medium” about a psychic who goes around helping people, and battling against the same problems and prejudices that are highlighted here. But of course, that’s only entertainment, so that’s okay. As long as we keep these things squarely within the proper perspective, we’re allowed to indulge ourselves in it all we want.
- END -
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7 Comments
There’s a classic Dilbert cartoon where Ratbert — who at the moment of the cartoon, is a self-styled psychic — is being tested by a skeptic debunker. He is asked to guess the contents of a sealed envelope. His intuition: “It’s a charcoal drawing of a woodchuck eating a small orange.” The debunker: “Nice try, you little fraud, but that’s a long way from an ink drawing of a beaver eating a tangerine.”
Excellent post was that. Well done. That there are simply ‘people’ - in every profession, religion, etc. - that suck at their job, or that rip people off, or that, conversely, work miracles in people’s lives, is a concept I’ve had to point out a number of times, particularly in reference to hypnotherapy. Hypnosis has gained far more legitimacy than psychic activity, but is still seen as a ‘dangerous’ area to venture into, by many (ie - my parents). Dangerous both in scam-potential and the potential for ‘mind’control’.
Ignorance isn’t bliss when it breeds so much fear in people, for the wrong reasons. But I guess that fear keeps them blissfully distracted from the things they should really be fearful of.
Some thoughts (before reading your post):
How is this different from anyone else we go to for guidance, e.g. a counselor or therapist?
“She asked me for 18 thousand dollars, so I gave her 18 thousand dollars.” That woman got what she deserved.
The undercover news crew were total dicks to that psychic. Also, the whole thing seemed fake to me, as if the “psychic” were in on it too.
The private investigator on his acting abilities, being able to cry on cue: “I just thought of every date that ever turned me down, and I was able to cry.” HAHAHAHAHA! Ahem.
What are they doing with color in that piece? The “hidden camera” segments are in black and white, but they put odd bits of color in. For example, the psychic’s jacket is pink as she is shown coming into the house. Are the bits of color purely visual interest, or are they trying to do something?
So it’s an attack not only on spirituality, but on real life (by which I mean, in this context, unmediated life). I see a tandem effort whereby MSNBC scares people off of exploring spirituality in “real” life, while NBC promotes spirituality as fiction. Done right, it can drain real life of its appeal and lure more people into the comfort and safety of TV.
I wonder, though, if their efforts might backfire. The fictional inspires the real and vice versa. It depends how many people placidly sit and absorb the TV dramas, and how many shut off the screen and go experience their own lives.
Well, I fell for this scam at a pretty vulnerable time–and the basic script for it is pretty uniform across the country…eye fell for it in the autumn of aught zero and got strung along for it for a few months and a few thousand dollars…it taught kmee a lot about m’eye susceptibility to suggestion, about the power of pressure tactics and hypnosis, among other things. but at the end of the day, although the LES psychic scammer (Gloria Vlado–and ya never gno what the real names are), took kmee for a ride, it motivated kmee to learn quite a bit–read up on the history of the gypsies (under the assumption at the time that she was a “gypsy”, but that’s doubtful and who gnos? and eye certainly wouldn’t base any judgement upon that appelation–knowing their history as the chattel slaves of eastern europe over hundreds of years with a history parallel to that of the slaves that were kept on this continent over the same period, in terms of treatment and dehuminization); it re-ignited m’eye interest in hypnosis (eye had already been re-interested in magick for a few years, though naively so at the time); got kmee to evaluate the degree to which eye was willing to make m’eyeself dependent on others for m’eye happiness rather than taking self-responsibility, etc. And there are still some funny things about it…synchronicities and curiousities…how Ms. Vlado happened to call moments after one of the most intense meditations I’d done (wherein I saw good ol’ Uncle Al’s beloved Lam or some “gray-alien” interior facsimile, stare at kmee). Then, there’s the whole thing about how in the spring of aught one, when eye finally had the strength to call the financial and psychologically leeching off, she kept mentioning how if eye was going to go back to NYC (eye was living somewhere else at the time, had fallen into the scam on a vacation trip to the city and given her m’eye number, thus the long drag-out)–it was best that eye do so in the next few months and not wait and then go to Florida to live and maybe see one of her relatives…’Course, the easy answer is that it may prove an easier game to manipulate and exploit someone who is not in a different country than you, but in your city or in the state where your scammy relatives are ..yet, given the links between NYC and Florida in aught one, eye wonder sometimes. Anyway, I did learn quite a bit. And though I don’t subscribe to LaVey’s whole position re: cons and rubes (rubes deserve it and you’re doing them a favor by taking their money), there is some truth to it in certain regards as it may help to un-delusion one.
and yeah, eye agree with everybody up here who’s indicated that scam artists exist across all groupings of people and the status-quo underpinnings of the NBC story are pretty blatant. One other question, as the tanned and made-up P.I. stated that one of the psychics they caught on tape had asked him for $100,000–I’m wondering why they didn’t show her in a clip or any of the other con-artists? was it b/c the lady in the segment is the only one to apologize and cop to the scam? was it because they weren’t as photogenic? was it that the particular psychic that they showed in the segment was also an actress and not a psychic? was it because she got some sort of sweet deal against being charged for anything if she’d agree to give up her face on television (just as folks who agree to settle their small claims disputes on People’s Court sign something limiting them from seeking judgements on said matters in a real court)?
Nice work, Tim.
yeah, good post. as a hypnotherapist i see the will in some for the miraculous and i`ve been asked on occasion if i am psychic because i can recognise patterns in people`s lives faster than they can rationalise. the majority of phsychic work is “cold reading”. it is a mechanism whereby a person can give information to the reader in covert ways. subtle changes in breathing patterns, eye movement, skin tone etc. can bely a person`s feelings about seemingly inocuous lines of inquiry that are designed to box in a person`s situation.
i use this method in readiing a person`s state during sessions as a way to help them make behavioural transitions in thier lives. nlp is a study of this in scientific terms.
mind control? yes.
manipulative? yes.
evil?…………..to a baptist, yes.
does my work help others? yes.
do i charge $18,000. er, no.
regarding the documentary and it`s agenda…….probably to reinforce the fear our culture has for anything that is not provided by experts.
the vast pool of dollars that gets spent each year on health care, and that includes mental health, is chased after by practitioners of all stripes, and what better way to protect that pool than to create a class of experts and instil fear in people regarding anyone who hasn`t the credentials.
hey nice blog…so i figure or more of a skeptic..well let some of psychics try to persuade u on a psychic forums site..
http://www.isawyousee.com