GOOP: Empowerment For Dummies

Gwyneth Paltrow

I'm waaay past trying to "read between the lines" on NewAge, but, when I do still read about it, certain stuff does leap out at me:

"The combination of aspirational blogging, female-targeted marketing and the alternative health industry has created something with significant potential to cause harm...while some practices are supported by evidence or are culturally important and date back millennia, some are pure opportunistic snake oil: anti-scientific and crass in exploiting illness for profit...The danger of Goop isn't simply in the broader risks of pseudoscience and misinformation, it's in the exploitation of medicine's sexism to create a new and gendered market for snake oil. The wellness industry isn't pushing for more and better science into women's health — it wants instead to create a secondary pathway for...disproportionately exposing women to the harms of quackery."

Why that doesn't leap out - to women - I can only wonder,...

Being Wrong (Has Never Stopped Whites From Lying)

Bill O'Reilly: "So where am I going wrong here, Tavis?" 

Tavis Smiley: "A few places. Not enough time to go into all the places you are wrong,..."

I've been saying, ever since Ann Althouse's insane ebola post, that she is now a conspiracy theory nutcase.

But The Atlantic is also reminding me that's not a hinderance to career success for white people:

”When Conspiracy Theories Don't Fit the Media Narrative”

White people don't care about being right - or doing wrong.

They just want their way.

And their way is to control the narrative.

Notice, Bill O'Reilly is totally wrong, but he - not someone who knows what he's talking about - gets to be the big shot on TV.

Ann Althouse's ebola scaremongering?

It's just brought her closer to the neanderthals.

She doesn't care how it looks - or is.

Few whites do, because ethics and intelligence aren't respected.

That's why a quack, like Dr. Oz, still has a TV show - but a well-respected doctor can't and doesn't. 

America's a nation of snake oil salesmen, relying on a shitty education system to ply their trade.

What did Ann's fellow blogging law professor, Glenn Reynolds, say?

The best thing about being a law professor is they get to just say shit, without caring if it's correct.

Those two must teach the most fascinating classes,...

The Beast Says TMR's The Only Rational Non-Hypocrite

I just checked, and I've done 47 posts on Whole Foods. 

I'm pretty sure every one of them has someone labeling me a whacko, of one kind or another, but I've insisted on standing my ground - and there's a reason why. 

I've been willing to endure the public humiliation, and some pretty tense moments with friends, because - in spite of the grocery chain's popularity - I knew I've been right. I was just waiting for someone else to say it with me, and The Daily Beast now has:

   Whole Foods: America’s Temple of Pseudoscience

Americans get riled up about creationists and climate change deniers, but lap up the quasi-religious snake oil at Whole Foods. It’s all pseudoscience—so why are some kinds of pseudoscience more equal than others?

I'll let you read it for yourself, but I would like to point out three other little things here:

1) The author, Michael Shulson, spends quite a bit of time on the paleo-diet as pseudoscientific.

2) Glenn Reynolds has spent quite a bit of time pushing the pseudoscientific paleo-diet.

3) I warned you, back in 2011, that Glenn Reynolds can't spot quackery.

And, as I keep winning these come-from-behind victories based on surveying nothing but the ethical landscape, I submit to you:

Instapundit's political instincts are severely over-rated as well,…

 

Overwhelming Proof Means Nothing To White America

Ann Althouse can learn a lesson or two, about real honesty, from some of the Disney family:

  "You really need to be as honest as possible about those feelings, or else you are going to lead yourself into many a blind alley in life. Anti-Semite? Check. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? C'mon he made a film (Jungle Book) about how you should stay 'with your own kind' at the height of the fight over segregation! As if the 'King of the Jungle' number wasn't proof enough!! How much more information do you need?"

Come on - this is America - Home of the Happy Snake Oil Salesman:

Liars get the money:

And proof is reserved for life's losers!

 

OUTsmarted

"Back to reality." The acknowledgement it was abandoned. Everything, not reflective of it, is now described as "Crushed unicorn dreams." Funny how NewAge just happens, all of a sudden-like, no?

It's like they know - when they want to - but, no matter what happens, they refuse to remember and, most definitely, will never actually do anything. Pravda's spitting out NewAge like it's poison:

What better way to staunch protests at worsening economic and life conditions than to make it feel like an honourable job/duty of the people to save "Gia". At the same time, they used this "science" as new pagan religion to further push out the Christianity they hate and despise and most of all, fear? Gia worship, the earth "mother", has been pushed in popular culture oozing out of the West for a better part of the past 1.5 decades. This is a religion replete with an army of priests,...

Speaking of "a religion replete with an army of priests," did you see a Utah GOP group disinvited Glenn Reynolds from speaking because of Reynolds’ support for gay rights? That seems a long way from the Mormon 'Kumbaya' moment they all shared over Mitt I-believe-we've-discovered-cold-fusion-but-we-just-can't-replicate-it-yet Romney recently.

But, come ON, why should it?

Some of the largest conservative media organs are essentially massive email lists of suckers rented to snake oil salesmen. The con isn’t limited to a couple of newsletters and websites: The most prominent conservative organizations in the nation are primarily dedicated to separating conservatives from their money.

Neal Young seems to be kinda quick on the fake up-take.

But when it comes to cultism, I don't think Glenn Reynolds ever will be,…

 

Update: NewAge Patient-Centered Care (Which Doctor?)

Wow - when a High Court in INDIA is saying to take action against quacks, and America's aren't, the gods (if there were such things) must be crazy. The best we can hope for, here, are class action lawsuits against the "snake oil" of homepathy - and damn it, we'd better be happy about it because (even with thousands of out of work lawyers supposedly looking for income) it's all we're going to get.

Over in England, Prince Charles's alternative medicine foundation was 'brought down by fraud,' and that's no laughing matter, while there's also a new comic book about "science, skepticism, evidence and woo" which has to be. I mean it just HAS to be, right?

I told you about the Australian college that rejected a chair based on Rudolf Steiner's ridiculous theories of "healing," but completely forgot to tell you about the Canadian dentist who got busted claiming he could cure cancer using "alternative" treatment techniques.

How he slipped through, I have no idea.

And everybody's heard about the Chinese human baby flesh pills, which didn't really faze me, because I've become so used to people making the most horrendous excuses for every gruesome human excess - like that $141.55 a bottle face cream made from the foreskin of baby boys that Oprah and Barbara Walters use - I'd already started wondering, a looong time ago, if grinding up babies into pills would even get a reaction from the rest of these ignorant, cold-hearted, self-deluded monsters.

 Now I know,... 

"The Secret" Is They Keep Getting Away With It

The president appropriately returned to the country's #1 snake oil salesman to diss "sideshows and carnival barkers":

President Obama told Oprah Winfrey on Wednesday that he was driven to release his long-form birth certificate so that the nation could move on and focus on a "serious conversation" about solving its problems.

Obama, joined by his wife, discussed the issue at Winfrey's Chicago studios hours after he took to the White House briefing room to chide the "sideshows and carnival barkers" propagating conspiracies about his roots.

Obama birth certificate: Oprah asks, 'Why did you wait so long?'

So, after announcing "We do not have time for this kind of silliness", he goes on the NewAge program that lavishly promotes every fraudulent product, quack doctor, and faith healer in the country?

Folks, you just can't make this stuff up. And, for some reason, journalists can't skeptically report on it either,...

Da King Of Blogging Don't Like Da Queen Of TV

I didn't post it at the time, but my new buddy, King Shamus, added some good words to an Oprah post I did:

The Emcee asks how Oprah gets away with all the cases of malignant neglect and malfeasance she’s been involved in. I think that’s a fair question. Most media stars that fuck up to this degree would have to answer some tough questions. At the very least, for almost every public celebrity not named Oprah Winfrey, there would have to be an acknowledgement that these things happened on his or her watch. The person would have to take very visible and very definitive steps to correct the problem. How come the O gets to skate through all her issues?

I think a big reason why people don’t question this wacky broad is that too many folks need her. If you’re an author, having Winfrey give your book her stamp of approval means a serious bump in sales. If you’re in television or film, a sit-down with Oprah gives your project an automatic boost in prestige. In other words, the folks that should be doing the investigations into Oprah’s various scams and failures have a very strong incentive to look the other way.

It will be very interesting to watch what happens after the lights go out on Oprah’s daily television show. My guess is that without the massive ratings generated by her show, Winfrey will start to lose the power she has to control her own narrative. The Oprah Winfrey Network looks like a slightly glossier Lifetime TV retread. Nobody is going to care if they don’t get interviewed by Gayle King on whatever rinky-dink ten-viewer gabfest Oprah throws her way. Why? Because unlike with the syndicated Oprah program, nothing on OWN is going to pull massive ratings. After the Oprah Winfrey Show goes off the air, it will become more and more safe for people to start pointing out just how lame Oprah really is.

Don’t get me wrong. Oprah will still have a lot of influence on the culture. She is always going to sell people solutions to problems they didn’t even know they had. She will continue to spin her non-judgemental/it’s not your fault/sob story/faux-empowerment bullshit out to masses of watchers, readers and listeners. Most importantly, she will remain a prototypical soft-hearted soft-headed lefty, which will endear her to many in the MSM for years to come.

What is going to change is the kid glove treatment she’s been receiving for so long. Without those ratings to hold over people’s heads, the fear of pissing Oprah off will start to fade. When that happens, the gauzy secular saint persona she’s spent years fashioning is going to crumble and a truer picture of this woman will emerge. While there will be many Winfrey sycophants who will dismiss the inevitable scandals and embarrassments, a substantial portion of her audience might not like the unvarnished Oprah that comes out. Some of Winfrey’s former supporters might realize just how much they’ve been played for fools by this modern day snake oil merchant.

Shamus' good words, of course, are "wacky", "bullshit", "scandals" and "snake oil merchant". Agreeing with me is just gravy.

Check him out at Blog de King Shamus. He's really good.

(You can find out more about what Oprah's been up to by clicking her tag, below.)

Busted: John Edwards, Rielle Hunter, And Bob McGovern (NewAge Reveals All, Truth Seekers)

We predicted it, and - after a new piece by The National Enquirer's David Perel - we're pretty sure we were right:

John Edwards was exposed by Lisa Druck/Rielle Hunter's "astrologer" and confidant (who also "works with energy in the area of emotional fields") the "intuitive" Bob McGovern.

Here's Perel:

When John Edwards showed up at the Beverly Hilton hotel to meet with Rielle on the evening of July 21, 2008, a large team of reporters and photographers were on the grounds for the Enquirer, and he was photographed secretly as he confidently walked into a side door at 9:45 p.m.

The Enquirer knew what room Hunter was in, as well as the room where her male traveling companion was staying. When Edwards came down to the lobby at 2:40 am the Enquirer was waiting for him, famously chasing as he ran into a public bathroom.

Behind the scenes we exerted pressure on Edwards, sending word though mutual contacts that we had photographed him throughout the night. We provided a few details about his movements to prove this was no bluff.

For 18 days we played this game, and as the standoff continued the Enquirer published a photograph of Edwards with the baby inside a room at the Beverly Hilton hotel.

Journalists asked if we had a hidden camera in the room. We never said yes or no. (We still haven't). We sent word to Edwards privately that there were more photos.

He cracked.

First, the Enquirer "knew what room Hunter was in, as well as the room where her male traveling companion was staying." Who else would know that but "her male traveling companion" - who was Bob McGovern?

Second, Bob McGovern is an astrologer. Has anyone ever heard of an astrologer, mixed up in anything, who didn't immediately try to capitalize on their fame? Hunter's friend, Pigeon O'Brian, was on television as often as she could be, but good Ol' Bob was nowhere to be seen.

Third, McGovern is a NewAger. These people, because of their unstable belief system, have no solid morals to lean on. Consider this loopdy-loop:

Bob McGovern was deceiving/exploiting Lisa Druck/Rielle Hunter, who was deceiving/exploiting John Edwards, as they all were deceiving his wife, the cancer-stricken Elizabeth Edwards - and the press was deceiving everyone else.

Even Louise Hay, the so-called "Queen of NewAge" let it be known that Sylvia Browne - her best-selling author - was a fraud, but somehow, utilizing those values, we're supposed to believe Bob McGovern wouldn't sell out Lisa Druck/Rielle Hunter (AKA “Riddleydoo Spacepod Rainbow.”) for a payoff from the Enquirer? Puh-Leaze. As our friends at Death By 1000 Papercuts said at the time, "it’s likely that the Enquirer pays better than his regular day job in the mystic realm."

Forth, there was no one else who could've been in the room with Rielle Hunter and John Edwards, when the photo of Edwards and the baby was taken, but Bob McGovern.

And last but not least, since Bob McGovern was in the room when that photo was taken, Rielle Hunter had to know what was going on - either during Edwards' visit to see the baby or once the photo was publicized - making her an accomplice in a doublecross. Again:

Another NewAge liar engaged in betrayal - probably to end Edwards' marriage, so Hunter could live out her dream of becoming Mrs. John Edwards, or (since "Being" Isn't "Free") to get a settlement for child support.

So there you have it - Bob McGovern, the man who took out John Edwards, as both were sliding around on snake-oil.

And the destruction of everything NewAge touches continues,...