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Mentalist charlatans
Thursday, 18 February 2010 11:52Highveld Stereo had the supposed medium John Edward on their show this morning, gullibly gushing over him. One person, a Matilda, had won a competition to get a free reading from him, so that's what happened.
John Edward is a charlatan, but he's a very successful charlatan, despite not being very good at it.
Matilda wanted to hear from her recently deceased mother. John Edward did the usual cold-reader thing, throwing out comments and questions till he got hits, then trying to expand on those. Problem was, he wasn't getting many hits. He didn't guess right on the mother's illness or cause of death (no, it wasn't cancer); he tried to link in another death, guessing at a young man who died in a car accident (not exactly an uncommon thing, yes?), and after racking her brains, Matilda remembered a schoolfriend who'd died in a car accident - but there was no link between this person and her mother. Edward also mentioned barking, indicating a dog that had died (also not exactly uncommon), and talked about twins (Matilda said she or someone close to her (I didn't catch that) had had a miscarriage, and John Edward speculated about that being twins, stating they were boys in response to a question (safe guess, huh?)). He totally blew it on his guesses about a father - no, a father figure - no, an older man related by blood - but scored no hit at all.
He rambled on about energies that he picks up, but that's a common thing from such people who use "energy" as a catch-all for invisible stuff they can't explain. Such "energy" would be fairly easy to detect or evaluate.
Frankly, I wasn't impressed; he didn't get very much right, and the things he got right were both common incidents and had tenuous connections.
John Edward is a charlatan, but he's a very successful charlatan, despite not being very good at it.
Matilda wanted to hear from her recently deceased mother. John Edward did the usual cold-reader thing, throwing out comments and questions till he got hits, then trying to expand on those. Problem was, he wasn't getting many hits. He didn't guess right on the mother's illness or cause of death (no, it wasn't cancer); he tried to link in another death, guessing at a young man who died in a car accident (not exactly an uncommon thing, yes?), and after racking her brains, Matilda remembered a schoolfriend who'd died in a car accident - but there was no link between this person and her mother. Edward also mentioned barking, indicating a dog that had died (also not exactly uncommon), and talked about twins (Matilda said she or someone close to her (I didn't catch that) had had a miscarriage, and John Edward speculated about that being twins, stating they were boys in response to a question (safe guess, huh?)). He totally blew it on his guesses about a father - no, a father figure - no, an older man related by blood - but scored no hit at all.
He rambled on about energies that he picks up, but that's a common thing from such people who use "energy" as a catch-all for invisible stuff they can't explain. Such "energy" would be fairly easy to detect or evaluate.
Frankly, I wasn't impressed; he didn't get very much right, and the things he got right were both common incidents and had tenuous connections.