Y'know, I Do Believe I'm Seeing Double (Standards,...)

It's so weird, like we've never left The Dark Ages: 

A man who impersonated his dead mother was sentenced to prison for fraud, but the Mormon "church" is filled with people impersonating "prophets" who do all sorts of bizarre things, and they're respected members of society.

Or how about people who claim to talk to the dead? We know better, but Sylvia Browne and the like are walking around free. Psychics? Homeopaths, pretending to be doctors and ripping off the public?

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

And why are San Francisco cops looking for crooks who targeted superstitious Asian women while Oprah, who's been "heavily promoting the work of New Age gurus Eckhart Tolle and Marianne Williamson," gets called "the moral force of the nation"?

Aren't the crooks and Oprah doing the same thing, but to different audiences?

Well, aren't they? 

It's just so fucking weird,...

 

How We Really Are Now (Part II: King's Lead Hat)

While discussing (the delightfully named) Pigeon O'Brien's Huffington Post column, on her role in the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter affair, Mickey Kaus says:

O’Brien makes it clear that Hunter has some kind of unreported charismatic power, but doesn’t quite explain what Edwards saw in her that would prompt him to put his campaign (and party) at risk. …

Really? Out of the many bloggers we read and respect, Mickey Kaus is no slouch in the Thinking Department, so it seems odd to us he'd need more help from O'Brien (above) to sort that particular issue out.

Especially when she opened her piece this way:

Lisa Druck was trouble,...Yet we liked her. There was something charming and feral in her aggressive bubbliness. The seedier stuff bothered my prudish self, stories of strip poker and non-monogamy. But I was seeing her ex-boyfriend and if I wanted to keep him out of the riskier stuff, I had to like her. So I did.

Charming, feral, aggressive, bubbly, seedy, non-monogamous, and risky.

If you ask us, that's a lot for Ol' Mickey to work with - even if O'Brien is describing Hunter in the 1980s. Fortunately, she doesn't stop there, and paints a more recent picture of Hunter:

In 2004 I went to a dinner party for the anniversary of [our friend Jay McInerney's book] Bright Lights, Big City in New York, and there she was. She looked and acted nothing like frenetic, drama-dragging Lisa. We became fast friends, again. Lisa -- now Rielle -- was living in Boulder, in the carriage house of her former mother-in-law. I was doing publicity, website design and marketing. She wasn't doing a whole ton of anything, but she had some ideas.

A foundation was the center of the work, which we broadened to a website as a way of marketing her voice and image for a possible TV show, the "MTV guru." Rielle's friends Bob McGovern and Randy would help with logistics. We made a website. She paid for the domain name, I paid hosting. We spent five, six hours a day on the phone, gabbing and working.

She was really good at the guru stuff. Once I was on a miserable, rainy client trip. I moaned to Rielle. She was impatient, not loving my issues. "What are things you want?" she barked. I babbled about wanting prompt payment and value in my personal life. "No," she cut me off. "Money and love. Can you get those today? On this day? In the rain?" "Well, no..." I stammered. "Then focus on today. What's in front of you to do. The path. Don't be attached to outcomes. Don't DO, just BE." Oh. Ok. And the money and love came in time, as they will.

Soon the foundation and the website -- Being Is Free -- spiraled into too many months of fruitless work. I abandoned it. We spoke less, but a few months later, she was back on the beam. She had a crystal clear vision of what she wanted, and had moved to the New York area to stay with her friend Mimi. We rapidly filled in the site: her bio, cringingly titled 'Story of My Life,' a story of awakening called 'Shift Happens,' and 'Kids on Board,' the ever-important board of directors, which was mostly just a list of people helping Rielle. I came and went from this list. It was a fun gauge of how useful I was to old Lisa Druck.

Two sections remained blank: 'Fame I Am Lives Forever' and 'Where the Money Goes.' It's funny how those came in time, as they will.

As she made forays into yoga instruction in New York, there abruptly came a two-day silence. When she surfaced, it was loudly: "I met someone!" Her voice was thrilled. He must be really something. "What's his name?" "JOHN!" she sang. "Does he live in New York?" "No, North Carolina!" North Carolina? I pictured a skinny bearded guy, with enough money or mojo to catch her eye. "He's married," she quickly added, "small kids."

And there you have it. In Part I of this series, "The Safety Dance", we observed the bizarre, yet seemingly deliberate way bloggers discuss religion and spirituality, in an apparent attempt to avoid whatever troubles can arise from appearing to do so. Mickey Kaus appears to be engaged in just this behavior when he suggests that, with the wealth of information O'Brien lays at his feet, he somehow needs more before he can figure out what was going on between Edwards and Hunter.

But, in case we're wrong, let's clear it up for him:

A self-styled guru, spitting mindless pabulum like "Don't DO, just BE" (as in "Be Here Now") and is either into teaching or learning yoga to better bend over for married fathers?

The attraction was NewAge and sex, Mickey, though not necessarily always in that order.

Now before you say that's not enough for Edwards to "put his campaign (and party) at risk", we will remind you only one of them was necessary for Bill Clinton to put his presidency at risk. Also, Clinton, too, has shown a weakness for NewAge psychobabble, working as he has with Tony Robbins, and as his quoting cult leader Ken Wilber proves:



Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also been known to agree with Wilber's "Theory of Everything", as well as cavort with NewAge psychics.

But let's get back to Rielle Hunter and John Edwards:

I struck up a conversation with the woman at the next event, as we waited outside. She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she'd previously had "many lives." She'd worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She'd been a New York party girl, she'd been married and divorced, she'd been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.

She told me that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York. She thought he was giving off a special "energy."

...I would soon learn that there was no such thing as small talk with Rielle Hunter. She told me that she'd felt a connection to me when we'd first met, that she could tell I was a very old soul. This meant a lot to Rielle. Her speech was peppered with New Age jargon—human beings were dragged down by "blockages" to their actual potential; history was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness. A seminal book for her had been Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now." Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.

Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses—to feed his ego and serve the world. If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a "transformational leader" on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. "He has the power to change the world," she said.

I had been nodding and sipping my wine through all this. "Do you talk about this stuff with the candidate?" I asked. "All the time," Rielle replied. "I'll lecture him on it when he's getting too much up in here," she said, gesturing toward her head. "He'll see a look on my face and say, 'Yes, I know, Rielle, "Power of Now" says …' "

...She hoped that with her unique eye for Edwards's true potential, she could show the world the real John Edwards and, in the process, help him to become the better version of himself.

So what's our point? We wouldn't hesitate to place a bet that somewhere around a quarter of the Democratic Party is somehow involved in some form of NewAge spirituality or another - and all without the public's notice or understanding of how it influences their leader's choices or what a politician's occult beliefs actually mean.

We'd also be willing to wager, if the public knew these things - and we mean really knew - they'd leave the Democratic Party in droves.

That goes double for blacks.

And it is TMR's contention they have every right to know. That it's about time somebody started speaking the truth about what's going on with the NewAge belief system in particular.

But what, exactly, would we tell them? Consider:

Rielle Hunter saw John Edwards - a white ambulance chasing lawyer and opportunistic politician - as the modern day equivalent of Martin Luther King.

And, since we all remember Bill Clinton was also seen, somehow, as America's "first black president" (until reality set in) we think that's also a pretty good place to start.

To be continued,....

This Is What's Happened To All Who Saw True

For over four years, the NewAge has been punishing anyone who is correct in their assessment of things - in favor of what NewAgers wanted to "believe". If we didn't have faith in their unsubstantiated Utopian NewAge bullshit (or their declarations of the "end times" if we didn't follow their lead) then it has been more-than-allowed for us to be pilloried, to death if necessary, as NewAgers entered politics and threw America's money and hopes and dreams down a fucking hole.



As a matter of fact, they insisted on it - they wanted applause - were you not entertained?



We told you, repeatedly, hanging onto American values - which started with utilizing The Macho Response - would win the day.



So, please, spare us the excuses now - about what you thought you were doing politically (with Oprah) or the wisdom of your current metaphysical insights (purchased from Eckhart Tolle and Rhonda Byrne) or how you view our lack of compassion (for socialists) or just our unwillingness to play ball - and be glad we didn't go in for more firearms training.

This long political/spiritual struggle is almost over - the tide is finally turning for sure - and the next one, to start destroying what the NewAge idiots thought they were building, is certainly beginning. Their lies are having no effect now, and are all going to (eventually) be exposed, for the rest of their sorry lives, if only as our entertainment.

Yea, we're all going to laugh at you, too - forever.

But believe it or not, because (so far) it's only ridicule, you sleazeball cultists are still getting off luckier than any of the individuals you decided to torment as a group:

Many of them are completely destroyed.

Which, as it turns out, was the only real "change we could believe in" to begin with.

Break On Through (To The Other Side)

Over the years, Oprah Winfrey has openly endorsed, or provided a forum (and/or "seminars" online) for NewAge books and "teachers".

People like Marianne Williamson.

And Eckhart Tolle.

"We live in an age of revitalised New Age mumbo jumbo; and these days no one is more jumbo with his mumbo than Eckhart Tolle."

Oprah Winfrey still pitches Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.

Oprah said The Secret was the most important idea ever invented.

Oprah dedicated two shows to The Secret and it's stars - most of whom appear to currently be in legal trouble - including Rhonda Byrne herself and James Arthur Ray.

"The Secret and Oprah's role in its wild popularity--she's devoted two entire shows to it and there's a 15-page feature on it at oprah.com--have already attracted censure: many reviewers have poked holes in the book's profoundly flawed central premise that our thoughts determine every circumstance of our lives, as well as its promotion of selfishness and self-delusion. But illogic and irresponsibility are not the extent of The Secret's faults. While many of the quotations Byrne uses to prop up her philosophy are shockingly divorced from their context, one has entirely eluded an extensive search for its origin: 'The secret is the answer to all that has been, all that is, and all that will ever be,' attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson on page 183.

To be clear, what I've come to suspect--strongly--is that Rhonda Byrne may have made it up.

So what? you may be asking. The question came up a lot in discussions of Frey's dishonesty, and back then the only answer with any weight was that we value truth for truth's sake. Many readers were inspired by what they believed to be a true story, but it's hard to show that Frey's lies did any real damage. But The Secret has potential to cause tangible harm to both believers and bystanders."

-- Julia Rickert, The Chicago Reader

James Arthur Ray now stands accused of killing three people and injuring 19 in a sweatlodge during a made-up NewAge endurance test.

"With The Secret, Byrne made a fortune off the delusional bliss of magical thinking. Let's not give her any more power."

-- Deirdre Donahue, USAToday.

Here is Oprah Winfrey hosting "the mother of NewAge", Louise Hay.

Using The Secret's "Law of Attraction" as a basis for her beliefs, Louise Hay blames the Holocaust on the Jews.

Like Barack Obama's Democrats, blaming America, George W. Bush, Israel, and anyone and everything else for whatever goes wrong during his administration, these are all messages Oprah seemed determined to give credibility and get out to the public.

Gullibility is the tax on American optimism. That tax was worth paying for most of our history. The Great Recession and Era of Cheats might change that.

-- Rich Karlgaard, Forbes

Oprah Winfrey was almost as much the focus of Election Night as the Obama's were, but now - during a nation-wide discussion of the President's beliefs - it's almost as though our "spiritual icon" of the NewAge is non-existent to journalists.

It reminds me of when Kitty Kelly wrote a biography of Oprah and the press refused to promote it - these, of course, being the same unbiased journalists who overwhelmingly voted for Obama and are, even now, reluctant to print anything negative about him.

"Though the demonism of the Middle Ages seems to have disappeared, there is abundant evidence that in many forms of modern thought - especially the so-called 'prosperity' psychology, 'willpower-building' metaphysics, and systems of 'high-pressure' salesmanship - black magic has merely passed through a metamorphosis, and although its name be changed its nature remains the same."

-- Manly P. Hall, Secret Teachings of All Ages, pp. 101-2, late 1920s

Oprah Winfrey is a NewAger who, both, attended and then left Trinity Baptist Church - just as the President did.

Oprah Winfrey knew Barack Obama before he ran for president.

Oprah Winfrey held fundraisers for Obama's election.

Oprah Winfrey stumped with the President.

Oprah Winfrey told us he was "The One".

Oprah Winfrey said he would transcend us and transform us - whether we wanted it or not.

The President's beliefs are a mystery - even though the President, the First Lady, and other top-level Democrats have stated, in various ways, their desire to "save the planet"?



Or let's flip it around:

Are Michelle Obama's beliefs a mystery - even after she made the NewAge claim, during the election, that Barack Obama knew that "before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls"?

Are Michelle Obama's beliefs a mystery - even after her Oprah-Regal trip to Spain?

Are Michelle Obama's beliefs a mystery - even after her vegetable garden?

Is Michelle Obama's vegetable garden a mystery - after we know Michelle got hooked on Oprah's pal, Alice Waters?

"[Anthony] Bourdain is a food hedonist, and has little truck with those who want to load up our eating habits with moralism. Consider the way he wades into the so-called ‘Mother of Slow Food’ and the epitome of Californian organic, locally produced cuisine, Alice Waters. Bourdain notes that the labour-intensive, pastoral vision that Waters promotes means that either lots of the citizens of wealthy countries like America and Italy are going to have to take up farming again - unlikely - or ‘we’ll revert to the traditional method: importing huge numbers of poor brown people from elsewhere - to grow those tasty, crunchy vegetables for more comfortable white masters. So, while animals of the future might be cruelty-free… what about life for those who have to shovel the shit from their stalls?’

So Waters is not exactly his favourite human being: ‘And with Waters’ fondness for buzzwords like “purity” and “wholesomeness”, there is a whiff of the jackboot, isn’t there? A certainty, a potentially dangerous lack of self-doubt, the kind of talk that, so often in history, leads to actions undertaken for the “common good”. While it was excessive and bombastic of me to compare Alice to “Pol Pot in a muumuu”, it is useful to remember that he was once a practising Buddhist and, later, attended the Sorbonne.’"

-- Rob Lyons, Sp!ked

The President's beliefs are a mystery - even with NewAge support for race-based multiculturalism?

The President's support for feminism, and NewAge obsessions with healthcare, "alternative medicine", and quackery?

And even though NewAgers were quite open in their (overwhelming) support for Obama's candidacy?

Really?

"Neither The Secret nor the rest of the prosperity gospel hype that Christianity is now plagued with comes with a disclaimer, but if the fine print were included, it would read like this. In case of a stock market crash and/or an entire economic crash, the shelf life of these claims is limited to one week...maybe.

It is also no secret that Obama stands in full opposition to the repeal of Roe V Wade and is openly endorsing gay marriage. By association, this is Oprah's stand as well and it will take more than her fifteen minutes of fame to sway over two hundred years of American faith in the sanctity of life and a reasonable national morality. America doesn't need a doctrine that sways in every new wind that blows across the fruited plains."

-- Michael Bresciani, Renew America

The President's beliefs became a mystery - again - after he sounded supportive of Imam Rauf's Ground Zero mosque, right?

Some mystery:

"Imam Rauf remains what he always strove to be, a brilliant marketeer (in the American therapeutic Tony Robbins/Deepak Chopra tradition),..."

--Victor Davis Hanson, Pajamas Media

With only a slight change of focus, it is possible for an entirely familiar story to achieve a unique shift in narrative - with a look away, from being enthralled with charlatans, as a starting point - making it interesting to see how long the effect of Oprah's beliefs influencing the President will be allowed to remain, lost in the ether, for all the others dying for anything they can finally say they actually understand.