Breakthrough at Tiffany's. (Or, my Tiffany epiphany?) Part 1.

So I'm in Tiffany & Co. the other day, killing time (it's a long story), when I noticed the pendant shown at left. I asked to see it. Perhaps because I was wearing the same sweatshirt I wear when I'm grading my team's home field after a day of rain, the salesgirl—who was nine feet tall, rail-thin, and so ultra-made-up that I figured she was either about to audition for America's Top Model or running an ad for her personal services on Craigslist—eyed me skeptically. But lacking a legitimate reason to refuse, and perhaps suspecting that she was being mystery-shopped, she agreed to show it to me.

It was a nice pendant. Very shiny. That much I will not deny. It had little diamond chips spaced along the chain.* I did not see a price tag.

"So how much is it?" I asked, thereby (a) violating the old J.P. Morgan dictum about elite-level shopping and (b) resolving any doubts the salesgirl may still have had about my unworthiness.

Keeping her composure, she replied matter-of-factly, "Eleven-hundred-ninety-five dollars."

"No, you misunderstand," I replied. "I don't want the whole display case. Just the one pendant." OK, I didn't really say that. I do have some degree of savoir faire. But I sure thought it as I gingerly handed the thing back to her.

A few hours later I happened to be in Walmart—talk about culture shock!—where I saw lots of other people who looked as if they'd just come from grading ball fields. And just for the hell of it I went over to Jewelry, where I discovered the item shown at right. It had a nice big price tag on it, plain as day. Now this may surprise you, but it wasn't even $1000. Imagine that! Actually it was $39.95. And if you look closely, you'll notice it even has a shiny little "diamond" near the point.

And at that instant a thought struck me: It occurred to me that the $1195 Tiffany pendant has no purpose except to be affordable only to people who can afford things most other people can't. It exists to be overpriced; that is its raison d'etre. It doesn't do anything that the $40 Walmart model can't do. (In fact neither pendant does anything, a separate but related issue that we'll get to next time.) It makes no tangible, measurable contribution to the progress of humankind. To my eye, it isn't even prettier than the cheapo version. Maybe it was a tad shinier, because one gets the feeling the folks in Tiffany's are polishing their jewelry every 18 seconds in order to sustain the chic vibe. I don't think the Walmart personnel worry quite as much about display appeal; I draw this inference based in part on the fact that a 2-for-1 package of drain cleaner that someone had decided not to buy sat prominently on the corner of the Walmart jewelry counter. None of the sales staff seemed to regard its removal as a priority.

Still, I wasn't buying the drain cleaner. I was buying (or at least looking at) the pendant. The ambiance was irrelevant. Wasn't it?

The desire for glitter and gaud, for status in general, is nothing new. But we in America have broadened the practice and elevated it to an art form. We spent the 20th Century fastidiously detaching value from function, a process that continued apace into the 21st century.

That process continued even as the nation's financial infrastructure stood at near-collapse. The two are not, I think, unrelated.

In Part 2: How this is killing America.

* Total weight .21 carat, according to the specs. On a wholesale basis these are very inexpensive, proportionally, compared to large intact diamonds.

Mass will be held in the sweat lodge on Sunday at 9.

Yesterday I received a republication request from the Catholic Education Resource Center, better known (to those who know anything at all about Catholic publications, that is) simply as CERC. CERC wants to reprint my Journal article on the increasingly embattled James Ray. This is actually the second time they've picked up one of my pieces, the first time also being a Journal essay, in that case on happiness.

I'm a little thrown by this new request, however. I gave my OK, of course—you can see the piece here if you care to—but I'm puzzled as to why they'd want to run it to begin with, since I'd think the parallels between (a) the New Age and (b) religious dogmatism of the sort long identified with the Catholic hierarchy might be uncomfortably close for some CERC readers. Blind, unreasoned faith, after all, is blind, unreasoned faith, regardless of the venue, the size of the room, or how many neat hats and robes the people up front are wearing. Also, clearly, the folks at CERC haven't spent much time on SHAMblog, or they would have run across that rant from just a few days ago about my early indoctrination in Catholicism and related unpleasantries.

I have a feeling that the editors at CERC, probably not unlike the leadership of the Church itself, are afflicted with that peculiar myopia that allows people in certain walks of life to be judgmental of people in other walks of life, even when they're doing much the same thing as the people they're judging. I'd imagine that in the aftermath of the Ray debacle, priests are looking at the New Age and its gurus, tsking and thinking, "Now isn't that ridiculous. And so unnecessary! Who could've put their trust in something like that?" I dare say there were probably hundreds of homilies on the topic this past Sunday across America, along with the usual prayers offered up for victims of tragedy.

Kinda like George Bush laughing at someone else's stupidity, or ol' Charlie Manson shaking his head and saying, "Man, that Ted Bundy is batshit crazy, ain't he?"*

========================

This is an amazing story, and one of the more stop-you-in-your-tracks visuals I've seen in a long time. I don't know that it signifies what we, in our relentless anthropomorphism, would like it to signify. Or maybe I'm just too full of human hubris to appreciate the moment for what it is. Still...it's quite something.

========================

Finally, today, can anyone tell me why Reese Witherspoon has a fragrace? Seriously. Reese Witherspoon? Was there a need for this? Do women actually wake up thinking, "Gee, I wish I smelled more like Reese Witherspoon. Then life would ge good"? What's next? Will Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter get a scent of his own? ... Oh, wait a minute....

* OK, OK, no angry ripostes required here. I know I'm overstating. But you see my point, no?

And in a further sign that the Apocalypse is upon us...

...Dubya has joined the rotating cast of motivators attached to Peter and Tamara Lowe's barnstorming "Get Motivated!" seminars.

Can a black woman be a dumb blonde*? Can a grieving mother totally miss the point? And other pressing questions raised on Larry King.

"I don't care whether the earth is round or flat, I have a child to raise."
—Sherri Shepherd, talk-show cohost and newly minted self-help author, on Larry King Live, referring to her confusion on the point, which she voiced one day on The View.

Sherri, honey, you seem likable enough, but I'm sorry, somewhere in there among raising your child and doing The View and promoting this new book and launching that new Lifetime sitcom of your very own, you need to care about little things like whether the earth is round or flat. The shape of the earth is one of those bits of core knowledge that humankind depends on to ensure the continued survival (and, one hopes, progress) of the species. And yet Shepherd says that when she first blurted the line in utter frustration during a segment of The View, she received tons of supportive feedback from other mothers. How sad. In fact, in discussing her book, she almost makes this self-absorbed, know-nothing approach to life sound like a form of feminism, i.e.: "Our plate is already full enough. Each of us has the right to do what works for us personally, and if I want to be ignorant, I'm entitled. I'm too busy to be expected to know stuff, too."** Shame on you, Sherri. Especially as parents, we need to uphold the importance (and, I dare say, the love) of knowledge, and we need to model that ethic for our children...not write books that imply that raising a child is somehow unrelated to questions of learning, even if we're being at least partly tongue-in-cheek. As it is, American students don't know a damned thing. Their performance in state-by-state competency testing, and especially international testing, where we face off against other industrialized nations, is appalling. If we knew more, maybe we could do more. Maybe we wouldn't make as many stupid mistakes. Which brings us to:

"I was impressed by the way he synthesized all these Western and Eastern concepts."
—Virginia Brown, mother of sweat lodge victim Kirby Brown, also on Larry King Live, explaining her own prior participation in a James Ray "Harmonic Wealth" seminar.

No, Virginia, he doesn't "synthesize" anything. He pulls stuff out of his ass, making it up as he goes along, saying anything and everything he can think of to project cosmic and karmic awareness so that suckers like you (and, tragically, your late daughter) will continue to hand him $9695. I hear lines like that from self-help victims and I think I am almost as angry at them as I am at the James Rays of the world. Brown's point appeared to be in part that Ray had always struck her as being so earnest and intelligent in the past that she was shocked, just shocked, at the recklessness and coldness of his actions (or inaction) out in Sedona. Keep in mind, this is no Sherri Shepherd here; the woman is a clinical psychologist. And so I am extra-angry at you, Virginia. I am angry at your gullibility (and, let's face it, the degree to which you probably encouraged or "enabled" similar gullibility in your daughter). I am angry at your ostensible willingness to trash the teachings and orthodoxies of your own craft in order to subscribe to this mumbo-jumbo. I am angry at your continuing need to alibi, at least somewhat, for alleged belief systems and personal-growth tactics that most of the rest of us would've recognized as asinine and potentially dangerous even before our children died in a sweat lodge.

===========================

And, in postscript, a thought for the day: If there's any substance at all to The Secret, is it possible that James Arthur Ray is indeed beginning to get back from the Universe what he projects into it?***

* No offense to blondes. Really. I just used the phrase for its headline appeal.
** She didn't say this specifically, but it's the gist of what she said, and, in a sense, the point of her book.
*** That is just a stab at mordant humor. Please don't think for a moment that, just because the "karma has turned," I'm suddenly subscribing to the insanity of it all.

A reader recounts a Landmark moment in his life.

First off, since the publication of my Journal piece, I think it's fair to say there's been an outpouring of tips, observations and personal-experience vignettes regarding assorted self-help programs, scam artists, and low-level James Arthur Ray wannabes at work in our midst. (The general tenor of remarks in the last category is, "How much do you know about such-and-such? Because last year, my sister....") I want to thank all of you for sending these. Keep 'em coming.

Today we have a guest column from one such reader* regarding his experience some years ago with an outfit that is certainly no low-level wannabe: Landmark Forum. I think it's well-written, well-reported, and of course timely. My edits are minimal and for clarity only. To be clear: I do not present this as a fully vetted work of journalism; the writer's characterizations of the notoriously litigious Landmark are his own, though I think in the overall they would withstand any challenge for accuracy. And so:

Thank you for that interesting piece in the WSJ. I found it particularly interesting as a I am one of those business executives (PhD in Engineering btw) who was pushed by well-meaning friends into attending the Landmark Forum.

I attended it with an open mind and the spirit of "well maybe I can learn an idea or two here." Instead what I got was exactly what you described. A concentration camp-type environment with sessions starting at 8am and going until midnight. Aggressive instructors who mixed natural charisma and impressive life stories ("I was a successful MD before I gave it up to spread the Forum") with physically intimidating techniques (e.g. yell at those who dared to stand up and question something by getting within a foot or less of their faces until they backed down).

What was even more disgusting was, mixed with all the mumbo-jumbo of self- actualization (by taking on your past, by confronting everyone you know/love/work with) was the constant set of exercises to sign-up more people to attend an informational session. Every time there was a break, the emphasis seemed to be to sign up as many people as you could. Then there was, by show of hands, public condemnation of those who failed to sign the assigned number of people. The alleged purpose of this was that you cannot change the world without changing those around you so you had to involve them in the 'work' of Landmark Forum. Of course there was relentless plugging of the various levels of instruction, with cautionary tales about how you haven't even begun to progress until you attend these further courses. All these were set as challenges/demonstrations of progress, i.e. if you didn't sign up for the next course you were showing how little you had progressed and had to stand up and defend your choice while being publicly berated. As you mentioned, people who dared get up to use the restroom were immediately put on the spot by the instructor pointedly stopping the lecture to question their need to go, saying they would miss key knowledge that would hamper their development.

Clearly within these groups were a large number of people down on their luck and self-confidence who were highly susceptible to suggestion. It surprised me during some of the "guided visualization" exercises how easily people allowed themselves to be talked into laughing hysterically or sobbing in tears.

Finally, as you probably know, Landmark has a relentless follow-up campaign that is, interestingly, staffed by volunteers. During the courses, they constantly repeat how volunteering to spread the word (mostly by calling on others to sign up for courses) is key to your self-growth. It took some effort to finally get me off that list.

I should say that I did go hoping to get one idea or two worth remembering, and I did. That was simply the concept that it is powerful to think of yourself as being indistinguishable from your word: If you say something, you mean it to be true in the most powerful sense. If you say you will do something then you do everything in your power to make that true. It makes you more careful of what you will commit to and at the same time, it is a powerful self-motivating tool, i.e. if I say it, then I do it. For a while I applied that frame of mind to myself and it was empowering. But as with all such ideas, it soon faded away.

I did this course many years ago and my precise recollection is fading, but the gist of it is well in line with your reporting.

==========================

Again, I invite others with personal stories to share to get in touch. Maybe we can do a compilation or use them for a follow-up.

* with his permission, of course. Regulars know that I never assume that emails sent to me off-blog are to be considered "for publication" unless I obtain the author's written say-so.

Bad joke: What's the difference between James Earl Ray...

...and James Arthur Ray?

James Earl Ray only killed one person.

(I thought of this because I keep hearing myself say "James Earl Ray" when I mean to talk about the really dangerous guy.)

For James Ray—if not for all of his followers—life goes on.

I'm amazed at the fact that James Arthur Ray, Spiritual Parbroiler, has made so few concessions to the sweat lodge deaths. By which I mean that the marketing copy on his site remains unchanged, or largely so. And his few attempts at damage control seem poorly conceived indeed. He just sounds so utterly detached from the tragedy, right from the opening line of the main text of his solicitation for new business: While things have appeared to calm down a bit, right now is your perfect chance.... Granted, he's referring to the status of the economy, not to the ongoing inquiry into the Sedona tragedy, which has become a formal criminal investigation. But how do you leave a line like that up on the site, given its callous overtones and the way it's going to be read by at least some people?

Then there's his most recent note (dated October 20) to "those affected by the tragedy in Sedona," which sounds more like a nice little pity party for himself ("people are throwing out accusations and disparaging me and our mission"). He confesses that he has "taken heat" for his business-as-usual demeanor, which has to be one of the most awful and unintentionally gack-worthy word choices on record. (Is no one counseling this man on PR?) He also says of the victims, "I believe the best way to honor their amazing lives and everlasting memory is to continue this important work." That may be true—the man may even be sincere—but again, it sounds terrible. It sounds like something you say when you're looking for a plausible excuse to continue to rake in the profits while people are dying.

That note, by the way, is found on an interior page of the site; you reach it by clicking a small black banner at the top (perhaps meant to be inconspicuous to visitors who somehow haven't heard of the tragedy?) Is it cynical to theorize that he doesn't want to put any lengthy reference to these events on the main page, where it might sour his near-giddy pitch for new business?

In other public statements, Ray has said he's "being tested" by all this, which demonstrates a rather solipsistic lens on a tragedy in which other people weren't just tested, but were killed. And at a Denver event the other day, when a few in the audience admonished him to "tell people the truth, James!", he replied dismissively: "This isn't a press conference." To be fair, one wouldn't necessarily expect him to cancel his speaking schedule and tear up his entire business plan because of what happened. But..."this isn't a press conference"? Something a tad warmer or more understanding of people's frustrations would've been a nice touch. (This, from a man who, like so many of his SHAM brethren, purports to be oh-so-plugged-in to the human psyche.)

And the capper? His pitch for next year's "Spiritual Warrior" retreat, which takes place September 18-23 back in New Agey Sedona, still at "ONLY $9695 per person,"* ends with the inspirational tagline:

There is no sacrifice—only greater and more magnificent results, wealth, adventure and fulfillment.

Oh, I don't know, James. I think some folks might quibble with the "no sacrifice" line. (I also wonder if next year's event will include a sweat lodge.)

By the way, I received an interesting email from a fellow journalist, Nina Rehfeld, who's been looking into Ray's willingness to bastardize and/or trash Native American folkways in the name of profits—or as she calls it, "the shameless rape of the traditions of the Native American people and other cultures." And Ray isn't the only one doing it, of course. I'll have more on that score, and other developing aspects of the Sedona tragedy, in the days ahead.

* emphasis (caps) present in original.

'Reliving the horror.' Or, 'For every James Ray...'

I thought this might be a particularly apt time to reprise one of our long-ago "horror stories," as I bracketed them. We had tons of people visiting SHAMblog for the first time yesterday on the heels of the Journal piece, and I figure some of them might be interested in seeing how this Gurudom stuff works at its lesser, unpublicized levels. For every established guru collecting $9600 from marks, ah, customers for what turns out to be a final retreat, there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of wannabes out there doing their thing, or trying.

Below is Part 1 of a story that I ran back in mid-2007 under the title "For Love or Money." It provides an intimate look at how real lives are affected by this crap, even when people aren't keeling over in sweat lodges. There are three parts, all linked. Read 'em and weep.

==============================

"Gerry and I were married 20 years, almost to the day he left," says Ginny. "His growth"—she speaks the word with sarcasm, then pauses to correct herself—"his descent into self-help was a long-term process. I could keep you on the phone till midnight."

Gerry* worked in the family business but, to Ginny's mind, was never that happy there. His brother, Rob, agrees: "He's always been a dreamer. He's usually worked for my father or my mother, or for me briefly. But he'd make little comments about being 'oppressed by the fluorescence' and so forth."

Still, says Ginny, "I don't doubt for a moment that he loved me. We had the marriage everybody wanted. It was sexy; it was fun. Now, did he love me the way I loved him? I'd have to say no. For one thing, he was always the fair-haired boy who put his mother first. I called it a Norman Bates relationship. And in the last 10 years or so, she was the one who got him involved in the whole Alan Cohen thing.”** Ginny refers to the well-known Chicken Soup contributor and driving force behind the Insights for Richer Living mentorship seminars. Like Tony Robbins' Life Mastery courses, these pricey shindigs often take place in lush, exotic locales. This year's menu, for example, includes an Alaskan "cruise to self-discovery" and a "journey to the heart of Bali."

Ginny continues, "I think it started to get really weird a year ago May [2006]. He just got so entrenched in this feel-good mentality that I couldn't even have the news on, I couldn't have Law & Order on. He said he 'couldn't have that kind of destruction' in his life." She also noticed that her husband was spending a lot of time online. It was the kind of sign that's curious but not yet ominous (though later, in hindsight, is recognizable as part of a pattern that seems clear as a bell). By this point, Gerry and his mother had already gone to Cohen seminars in St. John's and Hawaii. Then, says Ginny, "They decided to go to the one in Fiji."

Gerry returned from Fiji to Long Island with big news. "He tells me he's met a woman and has a tremendous emotional connection with. Her name is Catherina Rodrigues,* and she lives in Australia. She's married and has a daughter, just like us. And she's trying to launch a company, Think Love, which is designed to spread love and happiness and tranquility around the world. So I ask, 'Gerry, Is there anything I need to know?' And he says, 'Absolutely not. I still love you, et cetera.' So I thought a minute and said, 'Does she know about the money?' "

Ahhh yes, the money. Gerry recently had learned that he'd be receiving a very large inheritance—well into six figures. Ginny wondered how a woman seeking to finance a chancy new business venture might regard a sweet-natured, like-minded man who was about to come into serious cash. She also wondered about her husband's vulnerability to such a woman. Already, Ginny felt that the inheritance had affected Gerry's judgment and ability to think rationally. "I think he knew that it was his ticket to move away from his job, to travel the world, to sail the high seas," she says. "But we had a kid, for one thing, a teenager in high school. I was not going to sell my house and move onto a sailboat."

She soon began to get the idea that her husband's newfound spiritual ally had no such qualms. Though Gerry shrugged off Ginny's concerns about the money and Catherina's possible designs on same, Ginny was deeply troubled by what she saw happening in front of her: "They began to do a lot of talking on the phone. The calls just never stopped. Or Gerry's phone would ring every 20 minutes with text messages. He would never go to bed." To this day, she says, she still doesn't know whether the fateful meeting in Fiji happened just by chance, or was an arranged rendezvous. "But in my heart of hearts," she says, "I know that she fell in love with him there. She was willing to go with him to sail the 7 Seas, she was willing to leave her husband and her 7-year-old daughter. But back then, he would deny, deny, deny."

By the fall, plans had been made for Catherina to visit Long Island—a visit that would end up lasting six full weeks. "She comes with her husband and daughter," says Ginny. "I insisted that they can't be in this house—they were supposed to be staying at a hotel—but I was fighting a force and I was never going to win. It was ridiculous. [She and Gerry] would be singing spiritual songs in the living room. They'd be online together, or doing yoga together." Despite the original plans, Rodrigues and family seemed to be spending almost all of their time either at Ginny and Gerry's residence or, more often, at a vacation property Gerry and Rob then shared in Sag Harbor, deep in the lotus-land of Eastern Long Island. Gerry would accompany them there.

Rob, too, was growing uneasy, in part because, from the moment Catherina stepped off the plane, he says, "Gerry never went back to work." But Rob and his wife Jayne became even more uneasy as they learned new details about the nature of the financial dealings between Gerry and Catherina. "My brother has never really lied to me," Rob recalls. "But after [Fiji] he was deceitful, and it became more and more apparent that he was using his [self-help] learnings to manipulate the situation. First he invites Catherina, telling me she's just coming here 'with her family.' He tells me they have a spiritual bond and he'd like to be involved with her project. Then it turns out she's going to stay in our house out east. Then it turns out he hired her as a life coach—for almost five grand. Then it turns out he paid for her airplane tickets!”

Rob and Jayne's first face-to-face meeting with Catherina was a revelation in its own right. "My mother and brother are born a week apart in October," says Rob, "so I take the family out to dinner at a place here on Long Island—the whole group of them, including Catherina, her husband, everybody. They'd arrived October 8, and this was like October 20. We sit down at the restaurant, and Gerry and Catherina only interacted with themselves the whole time. They were knee to knee, turned towards each. I mean, I've seen horny 15-year-olds act with more respect for others! They completely ignored everyone else. They sat about as far from the rest of us as was possible."

Though others in attendance immediately sized things up and felt that Gerry and Catherina were rubbing Ginny's nose in it—Catherina's husband, for one, looked dazed—Ginny, it appears, remained loyal and, quite likely, in denial. "She's old-school Italian," explains Jayne. "You just couldn't say anything bad about her husband."

Rob, on the other hand, had no problems confronting his brother after dinner. "I said to him, 'What the hell is wrong with you? What the hell are you doing?' I couldn't get a straight answer. It's like later, when I'd ask about his business plan and I'd get the buzzwords, the cliched answer. He'd say something like, 'You're only asking that out of fear.' No, Gerry, I'm asking that out of common sense and concern for you." According to Rob and Jayne, their concerns were of such magnitude that they had a background check run on Catherina. Though such matters must be treated with a certain delicacy here, they say that the results did not allay their fears.

Even so, Ginny says that she could read Catherina's growing frustration with Gerry's remaining commitment to his existing family: "I made only one stipulation, and that was that he come home and spend every night in our house. And he did. He'd come home at 1 or 1:30 a.m., but he did come home. I think she knew she could get him—if she could just get him away from me long enough."

NEXT TIME: Catherina prevails...the intervention that didn't happen...and, once again, the innocents left holding the bag.

READ PART 2.

* Neither Gerry nor Catherina Rodrigues responded to my attempts to reach them for comment.
** My emails seeking a comment from Alan Cohen went unanswered. Ginny wants to make clear that she generally respects Cohen's "good work" and does not hold him or his personal beliefs responsible for what took place here. As for me, I'll have more to say on this, later.

The Journal piece on James Ray and such.

Click here to read. Feedback obviously welcome, all the more so from those whose research tips helped make the piece possible.

(It's in hard copy in Friday's edition.)

NEW VISITORS: Please scroll down for more on Ray, etc. And who knows, you may even find that you like some of the other stuff....

==========================

Your host is quoted here today. Actually, our blog is quoted—and much as it pains me to say so, I believe that's only the second or third time that has happened, at least in the kinds of major publications tracked by Google Alerts.

Incidentally, I'm fielding lots of requests for "media" today. Still don't know which ones (if any) I'm going to participate in, but I'd have to say this sweat-lodge debacle has made SHAM as hot* as it's been since the original marketing push petered out in late 2005.

Like I said last time around: Death is sexy.

* dreadful pun, and not consciously intended.

Piloting their way to the promised land, and related themes.

Taking a break from the recently colossal demands of my workload, I decided to do a little light reading. So I picked up the 9/11 Commission Report again.

As that line implies, I've read it before, but it's a ponderous document, so full of footnotes and cross-references and obscure bureaucratic acronyms that the best one can hope for on the first or second read-through is to apprehend the broad outlines of what happened in a hazy, general way. But now I'm rereading the section on radical Islam and Bin Laden's rise to power. Understand first that clearly someone with a grasp of diplomacy and "inclusiveness" gave this document a twice-over. There's an obvious effort made to be respectful of Islam, to remind readers that in the overall Muslims are "a peaceful people," and that what took place on 9/11 was, therefore, an aberration. And yet even through all the sanitized verbiage, there is no mistaking the general tenor of true Islamic faith.

Some context. I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. (It didn't really "take," but it wasn't for my parents' lack of trying.) This was the fire-and-brimstone, pre-ecumenical Catholicism of the 1950s, where if you weren't a Catholic (or even if you were a Catholic but had chosen to apply its idiosyncratic dictates to your life more selectively), you were going straight to Hell. Period. No negotiation, no exceptions. This was also the Catholic faith of martyrdom, the "church of our lady of pain and suffering," as the brilliant George Carlin would joke of his own indoctrination in Catholicism. It was a melancholic lens on life that did not allow for very much earthly pleasure and clearly celebrated the idea of sacrifice and deprivation now so that you could claim your heavenly reward later. Point being, this was a pretty intense experience, especially imparted by old-line Catholic priests who, when they had time left over after molesting choirboys, ran their parishes with an iron fist, raining their contempt down on you in their Irish brogues Sunday after Sunday, telling you again and again why you had almost no hope of being deemed worthy at the end, you miserable, worthless piece of secular detritus, you... ("Amen. And now Johnny, if you'd come visit with me in the rectory for a moment...?")

Yet this was all between us and God. Sure, in the Church's eyes, we were the chosen ones, the only ones who had any shot at returning one day to the full warmth of God's love—but we didn't have to prove this by going out and either (a) converting everyone else or, if we failed at that, (b) killing them. Islam, on the other hand, even when "delicately" described as in the 9/11 report, is scary stuff. The Qur'an itself is scary even when summarized, and when read literally it is downright chilling, given its pointed descriptions of what true believers are supposed to do to infidels. This is equally true of Sharia justice, the austere recitation of crime and punishment that, for example, has parents committing honor killings or trying to—like, most recently, that dad who ran down his "Westernized" daughter (and her friend) with his truck.

The Catholic Church, of course, was more actively intolerant at one point in its history—back in the 11th or 12th century, which is where the Islamists seem to want us to live now. (Although, take a look at the official explanation of the Crusades from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Funny how our loyalties color things, eh?) And Catholicism matured to the more passively intolerant religion of my Brooklyn boyhood. So maybe Islam will do the same.

I just ask myself: Is there still time?

Calling all SHAMbloggers!

I've been asked by the Wall Street Journal to prepare a piece on the dangers of self-help, using as its (obvious) launching point the James Arthur Ray debacle. Normally I would never presume to put out an "APB" for something like this, but I'm on a major deadline here (Wednesday morning) as well as still putting the finishing touches on a long and complex piece for Playboy. So I'm really up against it.

Would appreciate any and all guidance/tips regarding recent documented instances where people were harmed (or worse) by self-help-related activities/programs. Interested parties can send these tips through as comments or email them directly to me at my usual address: steve@journalismpro.com.

Much thanks, in advance. Consider it part of fighting the good fight...

Notes on the price of pursuing a ridiculous Ray of hope.

So the other day an erstwhile editor of mine, who has gone on to some fame and fortune as an author in his own right, sends me an email with a link to Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, and he says, "Hey, why didn't you think of writing something like that?"

Very funny.

But more important than author envy is that Ehrenreich's book has shined light anew on a point that I tried very hard to make in SHAM, not just via my subtitle (that whole "made America helpless" thing) but throughout the book: that this stuff isn't just harmless silliness. It can hurt you psychologically, it can hurt you financially and, as recent events show us, it can hurt you physically as well. (It can certainly hurt the folks in your orbit who depend on you.) And yet too many people—even some people who were pretty high on SHAM as a whole—dismissed my subtitle and the subtext it represented as writer's hype: i.e., "Well, you know how writers are [knowing wink]. Salerno is overdramatizing, exaggerating the controversy and the danger here, because he's trying to sell books. But his basic point is a good one."

There was no exaggeration about it. In fact, the more I think about things, the more I think I may have actually understated the damage self-help has done (and continues to do) to American society.

To get down to present cases: The point isn't that I think James Arthur Ray is a terrible evil man. I don't believe that's true. The point is that James Arthur Ray, like probably 92.7 percent of all the folks involved in self-help, has no idea what the fuck he's doing* (or even what he's talking about). He found a salable concept (that he didn't even originate) in this notion of "harmonic wealth," then stumbled into his greatest celebrity by attaching himself to the coattails of a project that became an Authentic Cultural Phenomenon, a mile marker in the American zeitgeist. And now, having achieved that celebrity, having found that limelight, he needs to justify his gurudom, to milk the moment. In commercial terms, he needs something to sell to keep the good times a-rollin'—a shtick; a program—so he promotes a hodge-podge of a "thinking system" that might be described as a philosophical bouillabaise, drawing on random elements of the New Age and other facets of karmic psychobabble in an effort to sound with-it and oh-so-cosmically plugged-in. He tries things without a clear sense of implications or consequence because he knows his spiel sounds good, catchy and offbeat, and because he knows that his audience—this shockingly large demographic of people who, in seeking deliverance, are willing to spend outrageous sums of money they often don't have—expects the bizarre from him. (After all, if it's too normal or commonsensical, how can it possibly be the brainchild of the special, proprietary wisdom of which Ray speaks? How can it lead his disciples to the Promised Land?) And then when it all blows up in his face—when people actually die, as in the case at hand—he's the most surprised guy in the room.

But of course, he still has to cover his ass.

More thoughts on this in the coming days.

* And this is one of those rare cases where I claim un-poetic license for myself in order to make a point forcefully. As regulars know, I avoid profanity and urge our contributors to do likewise.

Sweating, the details.

Just to bring the sweat lodge story up to date, on Friday I received the following email from Cassandra Yorgey, author of the piece that has created so much buzz:

"Thanks for your contributions in opening the discussion about James Ray's sweat lodge. I do in fact realize you weren't exactly... complimentary... but I appreciate your willingness to speak publicly and apply some critical thinking skills to the whole thing."

In a subsequent email Yorgey alludes to the "moral complexities" she faces here, stating that she'd "rather be criticized for sticking to my ethical code than for breaking confidences." She acknowledges that "[t]he whole story is a bit out of genre for me, which is a good reason to question me further! I totally get that..." Her genre, for the record, is "speculative fiction."

In any case, Yorgey's retelling of the sweat lodge horror and its aftermath continues to heat up, no pun intended. In her latest column she recounts details of the tragedy itself (again, from an unnamed source) that, in a sense, strain one's credulity, yet at the same time make clear why police are now bracketing the case as a homicide investigation. I still find it hard to fathom why people are confiding in Yorgey rather than screaming from the rooftops to the foremost investigative journalists in the land. Perhaps that in itself is testament to the cultish nature of so much of this New Age nonsense. In any case, this is riveting stuff. Yorgey's characterizations of Ray (again, via the source) are chilling indeed. I "sponsor" the column here with the same caveats as before.

We shall see.

Can James Arthur Ray brainwash his remaining followers? No sweat.

I invite you to take a look at this article, which claims to present salient portions of a transcript of a conference call held between James Arthur Ray and survivors of his recent sweat-lodge nightmare (now being investigated as a homicide). We have to be a little careful here because this is whistleblower-type stuff, written by a woman, Cassandra Yorgey, who says she received the material from an anonymous tipster. We never learn who that source is or whether the "transcript" is, indeed, verbatim. Further, Yorgey has an obvious point of view on all this. Still, much of the verbiage sounds like Ray, and—if indeed this is legit—the call clearly represents his attempt not merely at damage control, but at manipulating the minds and even the memories of the bereaved. In presuming to "counsel" the survivors—and as Yorgey muses, why is he doing this instead of referring them to grief counselors or other trained professionals?—Ray seems determined to keep a tight rein on things.

Throughout his portion of the call he keeps appealing to his listeners' sense of "community." He stresses the need for them to "surround yourself with healthy harmonic-minded individuals who support you" (i.e., rather than, say, skeptics or investigators who might have a different perspective on what happened at that sweat lodge) and to stay focused on "how we can best support each other" (i.e., let's get out stories straight and circle the wagons).

I also think the phrase "those who have fallen ill" is an awfully benign way to refer to what took place here.

Anyway, again, if this is legit—if—then it's fascinating reading, and provides a further glimpse into the cultish, brutally self-serving nature of so much of SHAM.

Sweating the Heat from Hollywood?

I'd wanted to weigh in on this whole James Arthur Ray/sweat lodge tragedy, but there's really nothing I can say any better than it's being said almost everywhere else at the moment, notably over on Cosmic Connie's Whirled Musings; Connie has been on top of this since the bodies were still warm to the touch. Keep an eye out for quickly assembled exposés on Dateline or 20/20. Producers from the latter show have been talking to me on and off ever since SHAM was published; two or three different times I was "assured" that they'd be putting together an "in-depth" special on SHAMland, a project for which I'd serve as a consultant. I'm pretty sure that now, with people actually dying in the name of self-improvement, they'll feel motivated enough to get off their asses and do it. Death is sexy.

UPDATE, afternoon. Been hearing from a few folks who tweeted about this and included plugs for SHAM. (Thank you, by the way.) One suggests I should've picked a stronger subtitle for my book: Instead of "how the self-help movement made us helpless," he suggests "how the self-help movement makes us dead." Probably a bit of a reach as an overall subtitle, but tragically apt here.

================================

I am distantly related to Al Pacino. Yes, it's true. (Well, no, technically it isn't, but I figure all Italian people are related somewhere down the line. Actually I figure all people are related, so by that logic, I'm distantly related to you, too.)

I mention Pacino because again last night I was watching Heat, which I think is one of the best movies of the past 20 years. The bank-robbery/escape sequence thrills me every time, but the film as a whole also makes you think: about marriage, about loneliness, about loneliness within marriage, about the complexity of human personality, about the true meaning of love, about the true meaning of loyalty, about the too-easy distinctions we make between right and wrong, about the true nature of our true nature and whether or not we give in to it. Dare I say it, the film provokes questions about the very nature of Self itself. That 5-second scene in the kitchen of that greasy spoon—where ex-con/short-order cook Dennis Haysbert*, who's been trying so hard to live up to his wife's expectations by going straight, is making the snap decision that we viewers just know will end his life—is heartbreaking and yet somehow heroic at the same time. Overall, I think Heat's director, Michael Mann, is one of the most gifted and surely underrated filmmakers of our generation; for my money, his films, one after another, are a near-perfect synthesis of art and entertainment. (Did I mention that I'm distantly related to Michael Mann?)

Having said all that, I'm annoyed with cousin Al this morning. And the reason is that I wonder exactly when and why he decided that screeeeeaaming all of his lines would be a good follow-up to the brilliant subtlety of his work in such early classic showcases as The Godfather**, Serpico and even Scarface.

So Cuz, if by some chance you should happen to read this: What gives?

Bigger picture, I'm wondering what you folks think about movies nowadays. It's easy to say "they don't make 'em like they used to," which is what we old farts tend to say about all aspects of culture after a certain point. But is that true? Is Hollywood's typical output as bad as I think it is? Just wonderin'.

* sadly, best-known today for uttering lines about "accident forgiveness."
** GF1 and GF2, that is. By the time GF3 rolled around in 1990, it was all-screaming, all-the-time.

No comment. :)

All right people, let's please have a sense of humor about this. I don't quite know why, but I laughed for 20 minutes at the headline.

Enter POTUS.

The more I think about this whole thing with Obama, the more amazing I find it to be, in the most literal sense of the term. The man is barely old enough to play baseball on my 45-and-over team, and he has already been elected President of the United States, has a Nobel Prize on his White House mantle... I mean, what's left? Honestly, it wouldn't even surprise me anymore if the World Series comes down to the ninth inning of Game 7 in Yankee Stadium, the bullpen door flies opens, Enter Sandman blares from the stadium PA system...and out to close, instead of Mo Rivera, walks Barack Obama.

Speaking of which, if you've been watching the playoffs, did anyone else happen to notice that promo he's apparently doing for George Lopez' forthcoming TBS show? WTF?

Live by the sword, as it were?

And a few other random thoughts on a frenzied Friday....

This is a very sad story with any number of overtones and subtexts. In brief: A mother, part of a rabid gun-rights family, who would frighten her neighbors by doing things like carrying her loaded (holstered) Glock to her daughter's soccer game, was killed in an apparent murder-suicide. We've been down this road before, and yes, I know there are many ways to bring about a murder-suicide, if that is your intent. It's just that a gun makes it so much easier and, once you start, irrevocable. (You can suddenly realize you've "lost it" while you're in the middle of strangling someone, and stop in time to avoid tragedy. But once you pull that trigger...?) Anyway, very upsetting. The story's closing image, of the family's pet mastiff being led from the house with its giant head hanging, will stay with me for a while.

========

Been doing a lot of reading and writing about the criminal-justice system. Many of you read (or at least started) my too-long piece for Skeptic, and I'm now working feverishly on a related piece for Playboy. And, you know, I have to laugh about this whole notion of what makes a defendant legally sane or insane. Think about it: If you're convinced that you're being followed by evil spirits who are directing your behavior, you're insane. But if you're convinced that there's an invisible man in the sky who is capable of creating new planets or even an entire solar system with a snap of his fingers, and who, upon your death, will reward or punish you depending on your degree of fidelity to his rules...you're just a good Catholic.

=================================

Finally, I must say I am mystified by the just-announced decision to award Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. Though Nobel prizes are awarded annually in a variety of disciplines, they are almost always given in recognition of a "body of work." Hey, I like Obama, I really do...but the guy's been in office for, what, eight months? That's a little bit like the Major Leagues giving a ballplayer the MVP award after 10 games. And how do we even know that all these peace initiatives cited by the Nobel committee—like the bridge-building Obama supposedly has been doing with Muslim nations—is going to have any effect at all? Very odd.

UPDATE, mid-afternoon. Here's a column from Huff-Po that I think expresses the bewilderment most of us are feeling, in true nonpartisan fashion, re the news from Oslo. The only thing I can figure is that they gave the award as a kind of attaboy...to wit, OK, we seem to have an authentic one-worlder here, or at least the makings of one, so let's encourage him. Still, I don't think that's what the Peace Prize was meant for.

Congratulate me. (I guess it was the 10th man.)

For days now, here in the extended Philadelphia area, I've been hearing all the usual Sportsthink-y blather about how the Phillies will have "the 10th man on their side," meaning the local fans, since the Phils have hometown advantage in their endeavor to get past the Rockies in the first round of baseball's playoffs. The conventional wisdom is that the fans give you that extra emotional kick you need to transcend your customary level of physical skill. Fair enough. I don't buy it, but fair enough. So just for the sake of argument, let's concede that a phenomenon known as the "10th man" (or 12th man, in football, or 6th man, in basketball*) exists.

I'm watching the Detroit-Minnesota one-game playoff as I write this. The Tigers' young phenom, Rick Porcello, is dominating the Twins, striking out batter after batter. How does announcer Ron Darling explain this? It's "that extra adrenaline flowing here in the Metrodome" that apparently has energized the Tiger hurler.

Now, the Metrodome, unless I'm mistaken, is the Twins' home ballpark. So it appears that in this case, at least according to Ron Darling's analysis, the vaunted 10th man is now playing for the visiting team.

Which brings me back to my oft-made point: If we can't say precisely how these emotional factors figure in the outcome of a game, or who they favor and why, or under what circumstances, then what's the point of even talking about them?

==============================

Below, as it happens, is a photo of my 10 men, which in this context refers to the guys who actually went out there and gave it their all in helping us win the league championship in our age division. A great way to end a very rainy season, let me tell you...though now I begin to feel the full weight of the emotions described in that lachrymal ode to my beloved sport.


* Technically, in basketball, the term "sixth man" is most often used in referring to an extremely valuable substitute player who can be counted on to come off the bench and give the team a much-needed shot in the arm. John Havlicek was the prototype for the breed.

Now he tells us?

Yesterday our ol' pal Ches Sullenberger made his much-ballyhooed return to the cockpit, which is probably more of a publicity stunt than anything else, since (a) his equally ballyhooed book comes out next week and (b) he's not actually planning a return to full-time pilot's duties, having moved into the executive stratum at USAirways. Sully reacted to the occasion with his by-now-familiar aw-shucks modesty, but he also uttered a line I hadn't heard from him (though in fairness, he's apparently said it before, so I'm being a bit sly with my headline): "I was just doing my job." He said this, I hardly need tell you, with regard to his exploits on the day of the so-called Miracle on the Hudson this past January.

I tend to agree with you, Sully; I've pretty much been saying that all along. You were just doing your job, and probably doing it no better or worse than lots of other experienced pilots would've done it (though we have no way of knowing that for sure, of course). In which case...why the book deal, and why the motivational speeches, and why were you at Obama's swearing-in as well as his first speech to a joint session of Congress, and why were you at the Super Bowl, and why were you hangin' with Tony La Russa behind the batting cages at the All Star game, and....?

Just think: One more goose, perhaps, and there would've been no glossy new job in safety management for Sully.* Indeed, there would've been no Sully.

* I realize that he lost full power that day, so the number of geese would seem irrelevant. However, had the flock been larger, he might've lost power sooner, right? Anyway, I claim poetic license. you can cry fowl if you want to... ;)