1998: Oprah Winfrey wins the #1 spot on Brian Dunning's list of the "Ten Most Wanted: Celebrities Who Promote Harmful Pseudoscience". Unsurprisingly, former-President Barack Obama didn't get the memo, even a decade-and-more later, when he was rewarding her for doing so, nor did he read these words:
The only person who can sit at the top of this pyramid is the one widely considered the most influential woman in the world and who promotes every pseudoscience: Oprah Winfrey. To her estimated total audience of 100 million, many of whom uncritically accept every word the world's wealthiest celebrity says, she promotes the paranormal, psychic powers, new age spiritualism, conspiracy theories, quack celebrity diets, past life regression, angels, ghosts, alternative therapies like acupuncture and homeopathy, anti-vaccination, detoxification, vitamin megadosing, and virtually everything that will distract a human being from making useful progress and informed decisions in life. Although much of what she promotes is not directly harmful, she offers no distinction between the two, leaving the gullible public increasingly and incrementally injured with virtually every episode.When you have a giant audience, you have a giant responsibility. Maybe you don't want such a responsibility, in which case, fine, keep your mouth shut; or limit your performance to jokes or acting or whatever it is you do."
Pseudoscience has now gone mainstream.
They're only saying "now" - and breathlessly - because of QAnon, which is, in part, the Antivaxx Movement that Oprah promoted in 2007 through Jenny McCarthy (at the time with SNL's "Joe Biden", Jim Carrey - and isn't THAT another *great* story no journalist can be bothered to follow-up on? How many walked through Theranos before one reporter at the Wall Street Journal saw the *obvious* fraud? Thousands, maybe? Plus celebrities,...like Bill Clinton,...).
Serious Question:
If pseudoscience had NOT "gone mainstream" starting back in the '80s, as Oprah Winfrey then began pumping it out, an hour or two a day, 5 days or more a week (when you include the seminars and retreats, etc.) for 30 years - who do the media think this is? President Donald Trump?
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