Steve Salerno: Thomas Sowell's A House Nigger

Steve Salerno of Shamblog - a writer we practically had a man crush on once - wrote another one of the stupid political pieces that have defined him since Obama came on the scene, filled with lies about raaaaacist gay-hating Tea Partiers (yawn) and wild-eyed speculation about what evils conservatism will bring - like progressives are the essence of intelligence and calm, Obama healed the races (as he "promised") and these last 2 years of liberalism have been "all that".

We didn't think so.

Given that at the end of his post, Salerno wrote, "Anyway, that's why tomorrow I'll be clicking all those tabs next to the word DEMOCRAT. If you disagree, I'd like to know why", we emailed him and asked:

"Do you ever consider there are black conservatives when you write this nonsense? 

Please, enlighten me to the evil of Thomas Sowell, will you?"

Here was Steve Salerno's reply, regarding this great American:

"Oh, you mean the black conservatives who 'got theirs' and want to keep every penny, so now they don't give a damn about those who may be less fortunate? Seems to me there was a rather impolite terms for such types back during the 1970s. It began with the word 'house'...."

Now, before we say anything further, let us remind you that Steve Salerno doesn't just run Shamblog, but is also a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and Skeptic Magazine, so this isn't like some idiot pot smoker at Jon Stewart's "Rally For Sanity" spouting off. This is a grown man, fully conscience of his words, spewing racial invective against a giant of American letters, racial progress, and economics - not to mention every other black person who's "made it" but doesn't share Salerno's (and Obama's) enthusiasm for allowing others to take what's theirs in the name of "sharing the wealth".

Steve Salerno ought to be ashamed.

To put it another way, we think his participation in Oprah's Obama cult has driven our poor Stevie crazy. It has others.

We told him we were going to blog about this and - just like a Scientologist or other cultist - he started making grumbling noises about possible lawyerly actions coming our way (Salerno doesn't realize we hang out almost exclusively with/on lawyer blogs now) before implying most people won't care what we report he said because some think we're crazy already. (Isn't it funny how independence of thought can be used against someone like that?) Anyway, it's tragic to see what we once thought of as a great mind turn to mush, right before our eyes, but there it is.



Oh - we almost forgot - if you want to have a laugh after all this, go look at the comments to Salerno's piece:

His regular Buddhist commenter (whatever he is to "Cosmic Connie" of Whirled Musings) seriously suggests, if you find Salerno's piece too harsh but want to read something pro-Democrat and intelligent, they should try the last "be afraid" screed by - wait for it - Paul Krugman!

Absolutely fucking hilarious:

We think losing politically, especially to the likes of us, is going to take liberals to a whole new level of darkness,...

Our job: make it so they can't find their way back.

It Is Truly A Mad "Whirled" (When The Most Mainstream Skeptic Is Also The Most Radical)

"An anti-New-Wage blogger who had once been sort of an ally, but whose politics as well as his views on the evils of New-Wage culture are a bit too radical even for me, recently published a blog post about what a complete and utter hypocrite I am."

That's a quote from a post (partially) about me, from "Cosmic Connie" at Whirled Musings, and I thought, finally, it deserved a reply. I mean, she wrote it all the way back in December:

Dear Connie, I still consider you an ally, I just can't stand your,...your,...whatever he is.

(I am not going to mention him by name because I do not wish to rile the beast of Buddha,...)

Anyway, as long as you keep he and I apart, we're cool.

You're ditzy as fuck, but we're still cool.

As far as my "radical" politics goes, it seems to me, someone who supported Obama's election - as you, your Significant Other, and many of those who hang out at Steve Salerno's SHAMblog did - would be confused by what, at the time, was one lone black man taking a political position in opposition to, amongst other things, Oprah Winfrey's choice of "The One".

(Salerno himself even went so far as to suggest I might be an Uncle Tom for not voting for Obama, without a harsh word in PC protest from anyone, or ever an apology from Salerno for suggesting such a stupid thing. You see, I hurt his feelings as well, for telling him he'd gone delusional over soon-to-be-President Weirdo.)

Nowadays, of course, I'm obviously ahead of the curve.

And - considering it's the Tea Party Movement that, right now, best represents, politically, what I've been saying all along - that's hardly "radical".

It's just American.

Like I said:

It's easy to see how an Obama supporter would get confused.

And finally, about me and NewAge:

I helped bring down a killer quack - in France - while challenged constantly by those claiming to be on "my side" (including you and Captain Know-It-All.)

Meanwhile, in England, bloggers are dismantling, both, homeopathy and chiropractic practices.

But what have I found, mostly, from America?

Except for (my sister blog) Panda Bear, M.D. and Chris Locke's Mystic Bourgeoisie (probably the Crown Jewel of NewAge studies) I've mostly found your trademark snark and loads and loads of Orac's Respectful Insolence, but not much else.

My impression is you - who know the harm NewAge causes and know the harm it's caused me personally - have no serious intention of ever stopping NewAge, because you're liberals, and bloggers, and, Damn It All To Hell, it keeps you in material. It's just jokes.

At least, that's the best I can come up with.

So like, whatever, I'm not doing this to preach - I'm done.

I just needed to get that off my chest.

It's off now.

Goodnight.

Not Positive Thinking Or Self-Help But NewAge

Introduction - A little while back, just before the New Year, I had started a series to be called "A Decade From Hell: I Am The Winner" that was going to detail all the correct calls I'd made over the last few years. Unfortunately, I got stuck after Part I because Part II was going to be on today's subject and, as I started on it, I immediately realized there was just no way to cover it all in a single post or two. So, with apologies for not continuing the "Decade From Hell' series, I now invite you to follow me down the rabbit hole that, if you don't know it's there, is capable of swallowing (if not destroying) almost any logical endeavor:

At some point, all the learned writers mention it - every one of them - but, in the end, they also tend to miss it by a country mile:

Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book out called "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America".

Steve Salerno wrote one about "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless".

And, at right about the same time as Salerno, Francis Wheen released his entertaining tome on "How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World".

Wendy Kaminer went so far as to say we're now "Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials".

So what are they so haphazardly adressing? Positive Thinking, The Self-Help Movement, Mumbo-Jumbo, and Extra-Terrestrials - they don't really have anything in common, do they? Of course they do:

They're all part of The NewAge Movement.

I'm not surprised so many miss the whole enchilada. Trying to describe a sprawling, assaultive, spiritual culture - especially a corrosive one that doesn't necessarily want to be noticed - is like trying to capture a cigarette's plume with your hands. Even those of us who understand it can't even seem to settle on a terminology.

The Mystic Bourgeoisie's Chris Locke signals it's many permutations by calling it "New Age++". Connie Schmidt, of Whirled Musings, focuses on it's scams with the phrase "New Wage", while I tend to lean towards James Randi's "NewAge" because I think he said it best ("Rhymes with 'sewage'").

But, long before NewAge "Undermined America" or "Made America Helpless" - or even "Conquered the World" - writers who noticed just wrote about the coming New Age. Christians were so concerned about what they were seeing happening in our culture, as far back as 1983, they aired a cautionary documentary on WCFC TV in Chicago called "The New Age - A Pathway to Paradise?" Needless to say, they didn't answer in the affirmative.

But Chicago, the most recent home to what some have referred to as our first "New Age President", Barack Obama, is as good a place as any to start breaking down what all these disparate individuals (encompassing liberals and conservatives, as well as Christians and atheists) are so concerned about. Why? Because, as we all know, it's also the current headquarters of Obama's biggest supporter - the "NewAge goddess", Oprah Winfrey.

Ah, Oprah - the #1 talk show host in the world and the woman many call "a moral force bearing down" on America - what's not to like about Oprah? Like The NewAge Movement itself, she's seen as a positive influence, out to help others, right? Well, yea, that's how she's mostly seen - but is it true?

I say "mostly" because those who are paying attention have found that, underneath the conventional wisdom on Oprah's world-wide influence, something is just a little creepy and more-than-a-little bit off.

I guess people really started paying attention around the time the queen of daytime talk started hawking The Secret. According to Salon.com:

"The main idea of 'The Secret' is that people need only visualize what they want in order to get it -- and the book certainly has created instant wealth, at least for Rhonda Byrne and her partners-in-con. And the marketing idea behind it -- the enlisting of that dream team, in what is essentially a massive, cross-promotional pyramid scheme -- is brilliant. But what really makes 'The Secret' more than a variation on an old theme is the involvement of Oprah Winfrey, who lends the whole enterprise more prestige, and, because of that prestige, more venality, than any previous self-help scam. Oprah hasn't just endorsed 'The Secret'; she's championed it, put herself at the apex of its pyramid, and helped create a symbiotic economy of New Age quacks that almost puts OPEC to shame."

Did you catch that? Oprah, ostensibly the subject of the piece, is not just in with quacks, but specifically "New Age quacks". Like I said, all the learned writers mention NewAge - every one of them - but, in the end, they also tend to miss it, just as Oprah's followers (a word associated with cultism) tend not to see (or willingly ignore) that their all-seeing hero is repeatedly being mentioned in the same breath as a "pyramid scheme", a "con", and "venality" - or later (my favorite) just "baldfaced bullshitting". (Where are all the millionaires The Secret's advice was supposed to create? Why are we in one of the country's worst recessions right after it emerged? Wasn't this just a scan with Oprah getting people to waste their money? Never mind,...)

Oprah's fans also pooh-pooh charges she spreads "The Glamour of Misery" and, more to the point, any statement that says "Clearly, Oprah Winfrey has been converted into the New Age Movement." But, as this charade continues to play out, I'd like to make one point no one can ignore or deny:

We all know what they're talking about - people are aware there is *something* called "NewAge" stalking our culture - it's the "movement" part that's not so clear yet.

But, reading it's critics, NewAge sounds pretty cruel and gruesome, doesn't it? I mean, "pyramid schemes" and "misery"? Are we talking about Oprah's belief system here or Bernie Madoff's? Neither: we're talking about the Western World's - which, as all the writers mentioned above have stated, is pretty bad - and, starting with this post, I aim to prove to you they're not exaggerating. Not by a long shot. Listen to them again:

"Positive Thinking Has Undermined America". "The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless". "Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World".

Ladies and Gentlemen, NewAge - not politics or medicine or science - is why our world is failing. Those who have gravitated into it's sphere of influence (and many are politicians and doctors and scientists) are no longer capable of thinking clearly, and thus, they're putting all of our lives in danger for it.

I, for one, don't believe that - I know it. Soon, you will, too.

Stay tuned.

Every Good Witch Hunt Includes A Trial By Fire

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?



Both newspapers and conservatives have a good reason to focus and stay with NewAge topics - they're important - because, whether discussing "irrational exuberance" on Wall Street, global warming hysteria, or a bunch of fruitcakes who think they can receive messages from aliens through their teeth, NewAge cuts to the core of what's always been wrong with our country - delusional thinking - and it points the way, at least, to what we need to stop doing in order to turn our nation's fortunes around.