"He hasn't been sick. Homeopathy has no side effects. . . .We don't hear about dying from homeopathy."
So why are newspapers failing? And why have Republicans been losing? To me they're connected - and the problem's simple to remedy: 
Take this James Arthur Ray thing - it's got something for everybody: A NewAge huckster and "guru", three deaths - with the added attraction of some poor NewAge believer crawling over hot steaming rocks - plus, at least, another 16 sick or injured; scams, scammers, and the scammed - with their kooky beliefs, sad and pissed-off indians, NewAge "power spots" like Sedona, Arizona (claimed to be filled with mysterious energy "vortexes") medical professionals doing strange things, The Secret, Oprah Winfrey's constant endorsement of dangerous NewAge nonsense, etc. 
It's the whole friggin' Take My Life, Please circus. 
But is the (old or new) media running with it? As expected, not really.
And also - pay close attention now - all this truly bizarre behavior, just as we saw with ACORN, is occurring on the left side of the political spectrum. 
And just as the Left is more than willing to expose (and voice it's opposition to) any manifestation of religion on the right, conservatives could, and should, have nothing less than a field day with what occurs on the Left's "spiritual" side. 
I mean, these are Obama's hardcore supporters: the truest of true believers. 
Surely there's something that can, and should, be done to shine a light on them.
The Democratic candidate for president was introduced to America by a NewAger, Oprah Winfrey. Obama's got a Secretary of State who (we know) dabbles in NewAge psychics when it's convenient. MoveOn.org was started by a psychic. There are NewAge provisions built into ObamaCare, and the biggest booster of NewAge quack remedies - always at taxpayer expense - is a Democrat, Tom Harkin (above). Democrats also hide NewAge provisions in bills for other things. 
Considering the passion we've seen NewAgers exhibit for their beliefs, up to and even including their own financial self-sabotage and death, isn't it time to start seriously investigating why they're doing all this?
Steve Salerno says the one aspect of NewAge he covered - "self-help" - is an $11 billion industry. If you started to add up the figures for all the different aspects of NewAge (starting with some of the most obvious like, say, anti-vaccine people, cancer vultures, and yoga practitioners, then move to more obscure stuff like Reiki seminars, NewAge retreats, and psychics, finally working your way around to even large homeopathy and cult marketing purveyors like Whole Foods) how much money do you think Democrats are giving to charlatans altogether? How big of a segment of the Democratic party are they or do they control? 
How helpful would it be to the conservative movement if a significant portion were politically neutralized - through the simple act of exposing their beliefs - Van Jones style? Come on, it's already happening to Bill Maher. Who's going to take him that seriously, politically, when we can now prove he understands how the world works about as much as Suzanne Sommers?
It occurs to me that James Arthur Ray's three sweatlodge victims are the only "spiritual seekers", I've ever heard of, who were actually successful at finding what they were looking for.
"I really think that people have to get smart and get tough. This is - there is a tendency that we have to believe in people who promise us everything, and we as a nation have to wise up. I mean, we really have to say: If somebody is promising us everything, watch out for your pocket and watch out for your soul. They're trying to - you know, they're trying to make you theirs, and if they claim any level of infallibility, watch out for - I mean, nobody's infallible.
And let's not forget to close the 7th circle of Hell that is NewAge's presence in the medical field. From Wired Magazine:
"Consider: In certain parts of the US, vaccination rates have dropped so low that occurrences of some children’s diseases are approaching pre-vaccine levels for the first time ever. And the number of people who choose not to vaccinate their children (so-called philosophical exemptions are available in about 20 states, including Pennsylvania, Texas, and much of the West) continues to rise. In states where such opting out is allowed, 2.6 percent of parents did so last year, up from 1 percent in 1991, according to the CDC. In some communities, like California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco, non-vaccination rates are approaching 6 percent (counterintuitively, higher rates of non-vaccination often correspond with higher levels of education and wealth)."
And "California’s affluent Marin County, just north of San Francisco," is what? Another NewAge "power spot", filled with "rich people", just like Sedona, Arizona. Stupid, gullible, and easily-led rich people - if you ask me - and they're all hurting other people by acting on their NewAge beliefs. (Wired says "almost 10 percent" of the children in California elementary schools "may already be at risk" because of these loons,...)
And how about the NewAge image of NewAge parents in NewAge power spots refusing medical care to their NewAge kids - which threatens other kids - while their NewAge physicians are leading others to their deaths in NewAge sweatlodges? True story. 
Speaking of NewAge physicians hanging out in NewAge sweatlodges, let's get back to good ol' Beverly Bunn:
"Bunn, trained in CPR as part of her medical credentials, said she repeatedly tried to perform the life-saving measures on her friend, but was continuously rebuffed by Ray's employees known as the 'Dream Team.'"
So, is anybody going to ask Beverly why her training for those "medical credentials" - which had to include at least a bit of science - didn't prevent her from attending a NewAge retreat in the first place? 
I mean, really, who is Beverly Bunn to be railing against James Arthur Ray when she's as guilty as he is?
"Self-help is not benign. The $11 billion industry can hurt you psychologically, it can hurt you financially and, as we see, it can hurt you physically. It can hurt your family and friends too.
"The administration is digging in and doubling down even though its conduct has invited scorn from pundits of every political persuasion and become the object of ridicule. The belligerence is remarkable and suggests that the White House behaves in illogical and self-destructive ways. (Attention pundits: stop looking for rational explanations for the Obamis’ irrational behavior.)"
The other day I used Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Bright-sided:
Jim Carrey? The same Jim Carrey that TIME Magazine claimed had "flipped out" because they couldn't get him to shut up about his becoming a NewAger back in 2007? I don't want to knock the investigative powers of Wired Magazine, but shouldn't Carrey's NewAge obsession be part of any article featuring his beliefs about vaccinations? If only to establish the credibility of Carrey's attacks on Paul Offit?
"Born again" into numerology. And yet, somehow, this goofy-headed NewAger, Jim Carrey, can almost effortlessly hold Paul Offit - and science itself - up against the wall. Incredible.
Let's say, for the moment, that I'm correct - that this is the NewAge movement. Check out the cheery messages the notorious peace-and-love crowd have been sending to Dr.Offit:
And each message ending with "Namaste" of course. Now which image is closer to the truth - the one they sell of themselves as flakey-but-peace-loving spiritualists - or the one I paint of evil nazi-like creatures who will kill - even their own kids - for their beliefs? Here's Paul Offit again:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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People around the world are supposedly outraged by a really short video of a mob in India attacking five women the crowd labeled witches. I gather it must be the invention of video that's upsetting everybody in the West because, at this point, I'm convinced it can't be the mass insanity that arises from superstition. 
People must also be upset because it's women being harmed on camera. Being upset about what happens to women, specifically, is mandatory. Especially if they're witches, or otherwise messed up in the head.
I'm upset Indian women have to be labeled witches when America's blessed with more than enough self-declared witches - Wiccans - to keep India entertained for centuries. 
I think we ought to encourage a cultural exchange: 
I mean, let's face it, witches are a pain in the ass (always declaring to overthrow the order, or whatever) so giving them a little (or possibly a lot of) "thinking time" in the "spiritual paradise" that is modern day India (heh: where they all, as NewAge westerners, probably hoped to visit anyway) strikes me as the best possible - and from the looks of things, in some cases, final - solution. 
There - another day: another difficult problem solved - by TMR.
You tell me:
"By the late first decade of the twenty-first century,...positive thinking had become ubiquitous and virtually unchallenged in American culture. It was promoted on some of the most widely watched talk shows, like Larry King Live and the Oprah Winfrey Show; it was the stuff of runaway best sellers like the 2006 book The Secret; it had been adopted as the theology of America’s most successful evangelical preachers; it found a place in medicine as a potential adjuvant to the treatment of almost any disease. It had even penetrated the academy in the form of the new discipline of 'positive psychology,' offering courses teaching students to pump up their optimism and nurture their positive feelings. And its reach was growing global, first in the Anglophone countries and soon in the rising economies of China, South Korea, and India.
But nowhere did it find a warmer welcome than in American business, which is, of course, also global business. To the extent that positive thinking had become a business itself, business was its principal client, eagerly consuming the good news that all things are possible through an effort of mind. This was a useful message for employees, who by the turn of the twenty-first century were being required to work longer hours for fewer benefits and diminishing job security. But it was also a liberating ideology for top-level executives. What was the point in agonizing over balance sheets and tedious analyses of risks—and why bother worrying about dizzying levels of debt and exposure to potential defaults—when all good things come to those who are optimistic enough to expect them?
I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone— better jobs, health care, and so forth—there are also more parties, festivities, and opportunities for dancing in the streets. Once our basic material needs are met—in my utopia, anyway—life becomes a perpetual celebration in which everyone has a talent to contribute. But we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking."
Did you catch that she closes with the warning "We cannot levitate ourselves"? That language doesn't make any sense, if the discussion is merely about "positive thinking" in America, does it? Come on, folks, you can't see/hear what I'm getting at there? I'd take a bet that Barbara Ehrenreich, and those who are currently interviewing her or even reading her book, don't comprehend that it's not merely addressing her ugly cancer-related encounter with "positive thinking" but - as indicated by that "levitate" line - Ehrenreich's ugly encounter becoming a book actually represents a larger (and infinitely more important) cultural event:
This maturing United States citizenry finally, slowly, waking up to the idea that we've been surviving, Matrix-like, under the direct effects of at least four decades of the cultish and narcissistic Baby Boomer's full-blown love affair with NewAge delusion. 
Ehrenreich got a nice taste of it while she had cancer. That NewAgers would add to the discomfort of cancer should give anyone an idea of what's allowed to happen to outsiders with hardly notice or mention. As I continually point out, they also kill their kids, kill themselves, kill family members, gurus kill their followers, all the while insisting that everyone believe *something* so as to be happy, or blissed out, about the outcome. Ehrenreich likes to mention that anyone who could see through positive delusions, say about the economy, got fired. (Can't you hear the late-Maharishi giggling at that one?) That's a perfect illustration of the type of logic used - and, especially, how it's been applied - as NewAgers have been conducting themselves and the nation's business. Yet, somehow, they still wonder how they've gotten us in this mess? As The Beatles wrote to Mia Farrow's over-meditating sister, at the Maharishi's Indian retreat, in the song Dear Prudence:
"Look around."
