It's A SHAM - I Mean Shame (I Meant Shame)

Well, well, well,...this is interesting:

Steve Salerno, author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, and his own Shamblog, has been banned from Rick Ross' anti-cult message board.

How funny.

And it's ironic, since I called Rick Ross as soon as I discovered my ex-wife was in a cult. The man's serious business, and I'll always appreciate that he was willing to fly in and help where everyone else gave me feminist-inspired excuses. But, unfortunately, it was too late: My ex had flew away to France before Mr. Ross could do anything, only to later kill two innocent people.

If Rick Ross' folks have banned Steve Salerno, it's no fluke. I've thought for a long time, as James Randi said when he discovered he couldn't reason with Andrew Weil about the "powers" of Uri Geller, Steve "could have been an ally — but we lost him."

See, I was banned from Steve's site a long time ago - right around the time he joined The Cult of Obama and seriously asked me (in a private e-mail) if I was taking my anti-Obama stance because I hated my own skin and people. I knew then the guy had seriously lost it and said so.

Cultism is this bizarre phenomena that get's people to thinking and saying such wild, twisted, shit:

Sure, I become the self-loathing nutcase because Steve Salerno, this former conservative and Wall Street Journal writer, had been guilt-tripped into joining up with "hope" and "change" liberals while I was determined to stay an MKL-inspired black conservative, right? Thinking for myself and not as one with "my people" (and staying true to what Steve, and I, had agreed was the right position to take, now, on the race issue) was simply out of the question - even though it was he who had written screed after beautifully-American screed about how simple-minded and useless the whole race thing is - not me.

No, Mr. Race Doesn't Matter, all of a sudden, had to have this arrogant prick for A Black President. For the sake of the country, for payback for slavery, for "healing", for some other imaginary reason. The fact that Obama had no real qualifications and, more importantly, was stumping with that crazy woman, Oprah, be damned: all of a sudden Steve Salerno was a shruggie when it came to race, cultism and Oprah's role in American life, and he demanded I not notice or call him on it.

These days, I wonder why he does the Shamblog because it stopped making any sense right then. To me, Steve Salerno has no integrity left.

I mean, how can he diss Oprah - and keep a spot on his blog for following her activities - and then vote for the candidate she was personally stumping for? Why, I wouldn't be surprised if, pretty soon, he's telling us Eckhard Tolle and Tom Cruise are geniuses.

Really, Steve Salerno's ever-widening lunacy since Obama ran for office has been breathtaking - and this is from someone who, once, truly admired him. But I'm sorry, as his mental framework came apart before my eyes, I saw the man become as intolerant of rational thought - and even his own book's positions - as the weirdest NewAger:

Trying to convince me that Bill Ayers' current lies and 60's terrorism were no big deal - and, he once said, maybe justified.

Recently devising an "open-minded" defense of pedophilia (I shit you not). Word to Steve: Not only won't I have an "open-minded" day about such things, but I'll never adopt NewAge/Shamland language, either. That's, partially, why I swear: No one's ever going to confuse me for one of them.

Steve also swears when he wants to, but demands nobody else does, because he claims to find it idiotic (When he's doing it, of course, it's a legitimate means of expressing oneself). The fact that's a obviously hypocritical stance - especially in a country defined by Freedom of Speech - is ignored by the former english professor.

Even worse, as he continued to slip the bonds of reason, he gave me the ol' "Keep my name out of your mouth!" business - demanding I don't write about him - when he writes willy-nilly about whatever he wants. Yea, he must have known that was going to work. Idiot.

And, now, an entire group of equally-determined anti-cult folks (who apparently like me) have discovered they can't stomach him. Somebody's, quite obviously, on the wrong side of some very-important issues.

Steve's now written three different posts trying to explain himself to the Ross folks - while also attacking them as intolerant (like this anti-cult business requires an "open-minded" attitude, instead of The Macho Response) but Steve, of all people, should know there's no explanation for what he's been up to.

Well, there is - he's become part of Obama's "open" NewAge political cult - but he ain't gonna cop to that: He still fancies himself a journalist. It doesn't matter that everyone who's still sane is saying journalism's become a cabal of Obama-sucking pod people; he'll hide his madness behind that title as tightly as Jon Stewart hides his liberalism behind "comedian". He probably thinks appearing in Michael Shermer's Skeptic Magazine is a good cover, too, but - another word to Steve - there is no cover for cultism. You're either out or you're in, and blatant hypocrisy - followed by lots of angry excuses - is one pretty good sign that someone's in it. You've gone loopy, dude.

Look, I'm no journalist, but I like SHAM. It practically saved my life and has a prominent place in my library of anti-cult lit. I also have a library of cult lit, and would seriously hate to have to put it in there, so I'm going to give Steve-O (who I used to think of as an online friend) some advice in the TMR style - and, if he's smart, his dumb ass will take it:

Dude, Man Up. Don't be like my ex-wife, who, after declaring she could walk through walls, started hating on me for pointing out that isn't so. You've drank the Kool-Aid so just admit it. Take your head out of your ass and say you were wrong - and apologize, openly, for disappointing people who put their trust in you. All the folks at Rick Ross wanted was for you to further expose Byron Katie because, supposedly, you might be good at it. As far as I'm concerned, you're a dick for not doing it:

Katie deserves it.

Otherwise, go play baseball, or sit quietly with your wife, listening to the "inspirational" messages of Joel Orsteen, and just hang up the Shamblog, man, because you've destroyed anything that was "real" about it, just as your chosen leader is trying to destroy what's real about America.

And, nowadays, that's not what "real" men are about - we can see through it all - or haven't you noticed?