Life's
a bitch, then you die; unless
you're dead and make an
appearance on "Crossing Over
With John Edward" (Sci-Fi
Channel). John Edward is a
ballroom dance fanatic from New
York who claims to have been
communicating with the dead since
he was a kid. This
youthful, hunky metaphysical
Dononhue brings The Dead to
television every weeknight for a
half hour -- practicing what was
exposed as pure fraud by Harry
Houdini himself, almost a hundred
years ago.
Gone
are the days of crystal balls,
cheese-cloth ectoplasm and
table-rapping; but the scam
called ‘cold-reading' proved
subtle enough to revive.
It's a con-profession chiefly
commercialized by celebrity
mediums like: John Edward, Sylvia
Browne, James Van Praagh,
and George Anderson.
Cold-reading is a skill that
combines people-watching,
emotional stalking,
disorientation, and
acting. A
‘medium' scopes-out
everything that their five-senses
can discern. They furiously
process all information available
and make calculated guesses
presented as observations,
beginning broad and refining as
confirmations or negations are
freely offered by the subject.
Charging
desperate people hundreds of
dollars to connect with their
loved ones at venues like
"The Learning Annex"
shouldn't be the path of a devout
clairvoyant. But demand
overwhelmed their generous
spirits. Unable to cater to
the thousands of requests for
personal readings (which cost
considerably more than a
seminar), they started
appearing on television (usually
promoting books and courses) as
guests of indescribably idiotic
daytime hosts, who promoted them
by validating these perverse
grief-games with inappropriate
displays of mawkish reverence and
baseless confirmation.
There
are a number of earthly problems
with Edward and his
contemporaries: none have
succeeded in performing under
real tests of scientific scrutiny
despite the Sci-Fi Channel's
claim that Edwards couldn't be
stumped by a major university
study
Problematically, the testing they
refer to was not scientifically
conducted nor sponsored by the
university that housed it.
The ‘psychics' were only
deprived of sight; only one-fifth
of the tools needed to perform
cold-reading.
Glancing
at "Crossing
Over" it's blatantly obvious
that Edward's subjects repeatedly
make the fatal mistake of giving
more information than asked-of,
resulting in him appearing to
know things he ‘couldn't
possibly know'. A tally of
misfires goes unmeasured because
he moves so fast, with such charm
that subject and viewer alike
can't possibly keep track in real
time. Gallery members are
so busy rolling over into
temptation that they don't ask
the obvious questions, like why
can the dead cross-over from
‘beyond' but can only do so
through a misfit handful of
otherwise unsuccessful
people? Why The Dead
-- who again have the ability to
transcend indefinable realms --
communicate only in symbols and
vagaries, unable to even state
their own full names?
Why a medium has to ask any
questions at all if they indeed
are in direct contact with The
Dead?
More
than smoke and mirrors, it's
smoke and flaming mirrors.
"Crossing
Over" is presented by the
Science-Fi (Fiction) Channel,
which shrewdly covers its behind
on-air and at its website, by
asking viewers to decide for
themselves if Edward is for
real. Unbeknownst to
Edward's fans and gallery
members, James Randi (as in The
Amazing -- the devout atheist-Uri
Geller's greatest enemy --
Randi), prominent modern debunker
and his Scientific Research
Foundation have issued a Million
Dollar Challenge for over twenty
years. No psychic or
medium has ever claimed the
prize, few have even taken the
challenge. Those who
went for the million, like Sylvia
Browne, failed pathetically when
prevented from using cold-reading
techniques.
Why
is Crossing-Over all that
bad? For the same reason
that when a child is abducted in
a small town, no one can sleep
with their doors unlocked
again. When a single
stranded motorist is attacked by
a ‘good Samaritan' who can
safely accept help
again? When you poison the
already depleted well of human
trust, you taint it for
all. These fakes tell you
with a straight face, that here,
in front of this TV camera, in
this studio setting, they are
talking to someone's dead:
mother, father, brother, baby, or
college buddy. According to
Edward and company, The Dead are
together in blissful spiritual
plane of existence. Even
though your dearly departed
cannot talk to you, they can
communicate through these total
strangers.
"Don't
feel badly for me!"
The Dead reassure us,
"We're happy; free of
illness and injury -- with
long-dead pets. We're with
you always. That time you
thought you felt my presence, you
were right, I was
there." No mention of
hell and it's occupants unless
you cut to the tragic Gallery
members, falling apart in
piles of lost memories and
profound ache.
At
the end of every show, Edward
gingerly reminds us to tell the
people in our lives that we love
them -- now, before it's too
late, thank-you and good night.
How
much love is caused by someone
who takes grief and turns it into
zeros on a contract? What good is
had from preventing people from
honestly grieving and moving
on? Isn't this giving of an
illusion of spiritual-completion
the same as excusing personal
responsibility in the
present? Like, ‘It's
okay that I cheated on my wife
now, because I can acknowledge it
when I'm dead!"
Why
don't The Dead tell Edwards
important things, like: the
secrets of life and
death; what God looks like;
or how to definitively
communicate any time with The
Dead -- if not see them,
too? Edgar Cayce was
alleged to have received
thousands of medical cures and
homeopathic remedies while in a
meditative state. Edward
seems only to have conjured up an
agent and a syndication deal.
I
have some questions for John
Edward and company: have The Dead
given you an approximate date as
to when you'll be exposed and
what foreign country it feels
like they're suggesting you
should fly to?
__________
Viki
Reed is a writer
and monologist living,
writing, and monologing in
Los Angeles. She hopes
to have enough money to
move to New York someday.
____________________
http://www.aphrodigitaliac.com/mm/archive/2000/11/27
VIKI
REED
11.27.00
