Anybody see LARRY KING tonight? Here’s the transcript. The subject was child psychics, which is apparently a new “reality” show on A&E.
John Edward (his mouth still the size of a quarter- freakishly small- only reason he’s straight probably) and she-seer Char Margolis were there, Sylvia Brown and James Van Praagh blessedly absent for a change, and no skeptics. There’s a clip of Michael Shermer but according to Randi’s web-site neither Edward nor Praagh will appear on a show where Randi or Shermer will be in person; perhaps now they’ve extended to no live skeptics of any kind. (A dead skeptic showing up would be really interesting and kind of like a babel fish- unless of course Larry King could see and hear them but Edward couldn’t.)
Funny aside (if only funny to me): Edward, like most of the spiritual adepts, is doing just what Jesus Christ and Meister Eckhart and Azriel of Gerone would be doing if they were still alive today: he’s playing the Flamingo in Las Vegas. No lie.
So anyway, child psychics… ah yes… about the kids themselves (one of them is Nina Simone’s 8 year old granddaughter who sees gran drop in to play piano [that nobody heres] and give a concert once in a while, another’s a 14 year old girl who sees demons and spirits and shadows oh my (Edward had to grudgingly admit he can’t “see” them, only sense their energy and play charades with them [“I’m getting an A… or a Q…or a K…”- I wonder if Vanna White assists his readings at Flamingo?). I kept hoping one of them would suddenly see a giant yellow bird in the rafters and swear another of the girls was bewitching her and Larry would get all “ART THOU WITCHING HER! I ASK DOST THOU SEND THY SPIRIT TO VEX THIS POOR GIRL!” but instead I think he asked something skeptically insightful like “What do your friends think when you tell them you see dead people”, a question that the girls had already answered but that’s okay because in his senility he had asked it to the camera man anyway. Some of these girls I think are flat out faking, some I think honestly believe they have “the Shine” because they’ve been told they have and it makes them special. One even admits she got it about the time her parents divorced.
So anyway, I have no problem with the kids- God knows I’d have sworn Elvis, Hitler, and Ho Chi Minh came to my room nightly to play hearts and tell knock-knock jokes if it would have gotten me a little money and a national TV appearance when I as a needy 14 year old. I don’t even have a problem with the Prophet of the Flamingo as a man’s got to earn a yacht off the incredible desperation of others somehow, same with Char woman. The other guy, host of the new psychic kids show, was pretty much a cipher.
But… Dr. Lisa Miller of Columbia University… a Ph.D. in the Columbia School of Education (one of the finest and most prestigious and most expensive institutions in the U.S. for the benefit of Dopers from Burkina Faso or a cell in the Hague who may conceivably not know) and co-host of the new Psychic Kids show, was also on board. Listen to some of the doctor’s gems:
Same question I’d have led with I must add, give or take a “the fuck” as 2nd and 3rd words respectively.
Oh please. Larry understands. I half expected the disinterested senile old baby daddy to continue with “the next question… for David Archuleta…in Michigan, New Jersey… you’re on the air. What’s your question for Anwar Sadat?”
But anyway, we’ve proven that there’s a difference in psychic kids and psychotic kids. One of two letters no less, and one of them a consonant. I know now why they pay Dr. Miller the Ivy League big bucks.
Larry continues with a plug for spiritual healing for all people:
After which Char “Hey Margolis…” (there’s a reference so obscure and dated only two Dopers will possibly get it) plugs a book and says that in 50 or 100 years all people will just routinely accept psychic powers and necromancy (she didn’t use the term- though she’d look great on the back cover of necRomance Novels) and both “sciences” will long have been proven true.
Well of course big paycheck from A&E or not, a Columbia professor is ultimately a Columbia professor and can’t sit still for this line of bullshit.
As said, she doesn’t buy this shit, she backs it up with science. “There are scientists somewhere proving this stuff is real with real test tubes and bunsen burners and chalkboards and Jim Williams’ Psycho Dice games and people drawing binky and all that… it’s real I tell ya! And nobody’s gonna tell me it’s not not you not David Archuleta not Anwar Sadat not any man’s gonna tell me it ain’t!”
More from Miller (Einstein’s long lost daughter at last found):
I think the notion that anti-Semitism and Nazism are inextricably intertwined is really supported by contemporary history. And I don’t care who disagrees with me either!
“God that’s deep” said Larry, passing the joint to Hyde, who asked “did I just fart or am I channeling Janis Joplin farting?” at which point Fez said something foreign and gay sounding. Then Nina Simone came in and told her granddaughter “Girl, what are you doing talking to that dirty lecherous old fool! I’m gonna snatch you bald headed… after this medley of Strange Fruit and Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood with just a little bit of High School Musical spin on it for today’s kids…” but unfortunately only the granddaughter could hear her as CNN wouldn’t pay for performance rights.
Joint passes to Tommy Chong who says “my grandma passed at 2:10 and I felt her at 4:20! And man was she cold as shit by then!”
Audience laughs, credits roll, end THAT PSYCHIC BULLSHIT SHOW. Final blip is Larry saying “tune in tomorrow night when my guest is going to be Lou Gossett, Jr., talking about his experiences as a gay woman in the Mexican Air Force, and Genevieve Bujold will show us how to cook a live antelope.”
Well unfortunately that wasn’t the end.
Last year my brother- I’ll call him Daniel (and at Christmas but that’s about it for calling him) took his daughter- she was 17 and she’s never had a B in her life- on a tour of various Ivy League schools (before she chose Auburn). She’d already been to Harvard for a summer course and said “it just wasn’t as… Harvardy…as you’d expect”, and my brother, based on the profs and employees and students he spoke with, agreed. He went to Princeton, to William and Mary, to Yale… at all of them he said “I talked to kids on the green, I talked to professors who met with us, I talked to the people in admissions who had actually graduated from there, and I kept thinking to myself, 'These people aren’t any more intelligent than I am. They’re no more intelligent than my professors at Auburn. They’re not even as intelligent as half-- okay, a quarter of my friends and family… where the hell are all these Ivy League eggheads supposed to be?”
Next they went to Columbia. During our next twice yearly conversations (literally- we talk at Christmas and in June) he said this of Columbia: “Found 'em.” He said it’s the only place he’s ever felt intellectually intimidated. (I should add that my brother, though he looks like Bill Clinton and has a thick southern accent, graduated valedictorian of a prestigious private school, graduated pharmacy school with honors, and is very very very successful in his field, so he’s no slouch when it comes to gray matter, and he DAMN sure doesn’t suffer from lack of ego and never has. For him to say he’s intellectually intimidated- that’s saying something.
So I’m watching this show and thinking- Columbia made even Daniel say “wow… these people are fucking bright” (and again- self esteem ain’t now ain’t never been his problem). How the fuck can they not only let this woman on TV but let her actually identify herself as a faculty member there?
And of course I love people who probably haven’t had a physics course in 30 years and that one a survey and a curriculum requirement all seeming to think that they can discuss anything from string theory to energy conversion in black holes on high holy days as if it’s no big thing if it supports some point of theres.
I’m a complete ignoramus on the topic of physics, but at least I know enough about it to know I’m a complete ignoramus on the topic of physics- things like Dancing Wu LI Masters and other New Age “we’re all particles in an atom in a tear from the eye of god who is really us on the hole on the bottom of the sea with a seagull flying overhead who we will become…” stuff has just always irked me because it tries to make so simplistic something that’s so not- basically, if you can’t do advanced math you can’t do physics, it’s that simple, and I’m guessing you can’t do advanced math- not that there’s anything wrong with that, as a psychologist you don’t really need to about binomial theorem be teaming with a lot of news, but don’t do the Chopraphysics to make your point.
Anyway, this is a lame rant, but it just irks me that A&E, a channel I used to LOVE when I first got cable (20 years ago it were, aye… ah laddy you shoulda seen her in those days… she’d have Broadway shows taped on the stage and she’d show ‘em to ya right there on the screen! And we ain’t just talkin’ musicals and the like neither, nah… heady stuff, Arthur Miller, 50 Bales of Cotton with Jose Ferrer… and Biography back when it was worth watching… they had a reenactment of the inquest of JFK they did…
And now they’re having DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER marathons (and after showing that they will not condone two faced racists they’ve decided he’s learned his lesson and are bringing him back, and it’s nothing to do with the fact their ratings nosedived). And they have CHILD PSYCHICS. Meanwhile, if like me your favorite field of world history has always been a toss up between ice road trucking and lumberjacking then turn on the History Channel and sonny jim you just made a left turn onto Lucky Street! The dumming down, just attrocious…
But for the love of Thoth, god of writing, I thought at least the Ivy League was fucking safe! Now they’re in collusion! Next up: "I went to Yale and majored in Illuminati Theory— I wrote my thesis on “What I think Particle Physics would say about Michelangelo’s predictions that Hitler would return in 2081.”
Or something- it’s storming here so must turn off the computer and don’t really have final thoughts. So just don’t do drugs and stuff.
