I’ve seen a lot of people say this kind of thing about chiropractors and I’m not sure why. I’ve never been to one, but friends of mine have, and they describe it as a mix of massage and physiotherapy. Not exactly worthy of vitriol. It was even paid for by their insurance. Does it have some other meaning or something?
A LOT? Uh, how about ALL of the responsibility falls on the parent that allowed this. And really other then the money exchanged for the service provided there is no real loss here. The kid is not going to be scarred for life when or if he ever realizes it was all bullshit.
Well, according to Cecil Adams, chiropractors are probably okay so long as they aren’t claiming they can cure disease using the power of positive thinking or whatever. Some chiropractors do make those claims.
I don’t really they’re that much worse than, say, dentists.
No, but you do.
Put it this way: How many chiropractors does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one. But it takes fifty visits.
He’s telling me you used to do … things, <pause> and those things involved … stuff?
Meanwhile the show, and his mom, are dragging this poor kid with his real grief onto television and the Internet for the whole world to see. TLC or whatever channel that is has been heavily running that commercial showing that poor devastated boy sobbing over the thought that maybe this strange lady is actually talking to his dead daddy. They’re pimping out a child’s grief to promote their stupid “reality” show.
The weirdest thing is that Peter Popoff still has a career after this. That’s about as conclusive a debunking as I’ve ever seen.
May have something to do with the Simon Singh chiropractic lawsuit.
Count me as another one who doesn’t get the outrage.
I can only speak for Long Island Medium, as my wife likes the show so I’ve seen a fair amount of it, but all of the people that pay the lady for readings *want *to be comforted, to be told that their loved ones are in a good place and they’re watching little Timmy masturbate or something (not sure about that last one).
So all they are getting is a service that they paid for. As for the kids, are the parents not feeding the kid so they can save enough money to go pay for a psychic? In that case, then yeah, the parent is a dick. But otherwise, it’s no worse than any friend or relative telling the child that daddy is in a happy place.
I’m only speaking for this case though, where a person pays a psychic for a reading. If the psychic is bilking the person out of thousands of dollars over time, then that crosses the line from service to crime.
Mark
ETA: Thisis the kind of psychic asshole that I’m talking about. These people are serious assholes.
I’m psychic, too.
You are reading this on a LCD screen while seated in a chair.
I’m praying for that kitten.
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So all they are getting is a service that they paid for. As for the kids, are the parents not feeding the kid so they can save enough money to go pay for a psychic? In that case, then yeah, the parent is a dick. But otherwise, it’s no worse than any friend or relative telling the child that daddy is in a happy place.
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Um no…it’s not like that at all. When someone tried to comfort a child they say ‘your father is in a happy place’ (presumably thinking about girls in lingerie with large mugs of beer and dwarves riding tricycles, if Happy Gilmore was correct). They aren’t saying ‘I’m speaking to your father and he’s telling me X, Y and Z’. Hard for me to believe you can’t see the difference between meaningless comfort and out and out lying to and deliberately tricking a child about his dead father…claiming she KNOWS not only that his father is still in existence but also what his father is saying and feeling and thinking.
Isn’t the end result the same thing? What harm is being done to the child by telling him this? I suppose he could develop some sort of obsession with being able to talk to his dead dad or something, but I would think the chances of that are small.
Honestly, I don’t see the difference. We lie to children all the time, whether it’s about santa claus, going blind if they touch themselves, telling them that the cat ran away and is with another family now or whatever. I think as long as it’s in the best interest of the child (Yeah, yeah, that’s a pretty vague statement), or at least the parent deems it to be, then it’s not a big deal.
I don’t have kids however, so if you’re coming from the view of a parent, I respect that you might take this more seriously than me.
Oh, and Lute Skywatcher? I was in bed when I wrote that, so you’re only half psychic. Does that make you chic?
Mark
It’s the difference between conveying vague comfort and sure knowledge…and the difference between providing comfort for the child’s sake and tricking him for personal gain. If I tell you that your lost loved on is up in heaven and is happy, that’s simply vague and comforting. I’m not attempting to convey special knowledge, and not doing it for my own gain, but instead solely for the child, because that’s what people do when others lose someone they love. However, if I tell you that your lost father, who’s name is something like Fred (Oh, it’s Frank…close enough) is speaking to me, and telling me he’s thinking of a picture of you (did you ever take a picture? Oh, you have one with your father on a fishing trip? That’s the one he means), and he wants you to remember that coin (have you ever had a coin? Oh, it’s a locket? That’s what he means…he wants you to think of the locket), blah blah blah blah blah…well, that conveys a level of certainty and is going to have a much deeper impact. Especially on a child. That child is going to be convinced that his father really IS speaking to this woman…and really is still existing.
Perhaps you think there is no harm in that, but to me it’s harm on a bunch of levels. For one thing, it’s beyond just offering comfort…it’s deliberately tricking a child, and doing so for personal gain (it IS a freaking TV commercial for her idiotic show after all). Also, it’s going to leave an impression with this child that ghosts are real, and the mediums like this can talk to them…and that’s going to leave this child open to that horseshit for years, perhaps for the rest of his life, making him an easy mark for these and other types of Woo. To me, this is the worst possible combination of fucking with this kid…for personal gain and not to comfort the kid, to trick him, and in a way that will leave the kid scared and vulnerable to the next wave of psychic fucks to bilk him later in life.
The general message isn’t all that harmful. The perpetuation of fraud by psychics is harmful, though.
I would argue that most of those lies are harmful to the child, or at least they will be if they’re taken to a certain extent. And let’s be honest here: parents lie to protect their children, but not infrequently they’re really lying for their own convenience.
Well said. I have a certain amount of pity for the Long Island Medium lady because on the show, it seems to me that she’s desperate for attention and doesn’t really understand why she’s doing what she’s doing. And for that matter most of what she does is entirely unimpressive; the questions she asks are so obvious they should make anyone skeptical. What’s that you say? She’s found a middle-aged person who has lost a parent? What are the odds! And the person keeps a memento of the deceased? Astonishing! It seems like she “became” a psychic because she has a deep seated need for acknowledgement that wasn’t being met. That seems like it’s the case for a lot of mediums (at least the female ones I’ve read about.) She’d be nuts even if she didn’t think she could speak to the dead. It’s possible I’ve been misled by the show and she’s much more calculating than she appears, but that’s the sense I get.
Ah, but where were you when you read my post?
