Althouse: "Some of them call me an oracle. Some call me a guru. But I’m just a girl like anyone else."

September 19, 2009

"Some of them call me an oracle. Some call me a guru. But I’m just a girl like anyone else."

Why not create a business out of absolutely nothing but bullshit?

45 comments:

Wince said...: I couldn't grind through that whole pretentious NYT article.

Does she get nakked?; 9/19/09, 9:53 PM
Donna B. said...: I once got drunk and had an inspiring communal experience with the weeds in my front yard.

That led to a certain awakening and thus who am I to question whatever awakens another?

That since I've tried to kill those weeds in no way should be interpreted as hostile to any living thing.; 9/19/09, 10:08 PM
David said...: I get to say it every week.

"Nearly everything about the New York Times can be explained by its self-absorbed yuppie staff and readership."; 9/19/09, 10:21 PM
chuck b. said...: "She celebrated her birthday and wedding anniversary in New Mexico before heading to San Francisco to speak with magazine editors at VagNews."; 9/19/09, 10:23 PM
traditionalguy said...: So Crack Emcee is 100% right it seems.As Crack says-- do not trust these murderers a second...they are not innocent fools, but will do whatever their spirit guides tell them to do to themselves and to others.; 9/19/09, 10:26 PM
knox said...: Clearly this post is just red meat for Crack.

: ); 9/19/09, 10:26 PM
Anonymous said...: My dream job is being paid to tell people whatever I feel like saying at any given moment.; 9/19/09, 10:28 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh dear.; 9/19/09, 10:34 PM
srfwotb said...: Ooooo. The early 90s returneth.

Or maybe that's the illusion created by the NY Times trying to hawk the "new trend" and going round and round, jumping from color to color, on a patchwork quilt and making it a linear road to nowhere.; 9/19/09, 10:34 PM
Anonymous said...: She charges $100 an hour for private sessions. The core of her message, she said, is, “When you step out into the unknown anything is possible in your life.”

The core of my message is "Dignity - always dignity!"

$100 please.; 9/19/09, 10:40 PM
Anonymous said...: Don't take the bait Crack, just don't! :)

Does she get nakked?

No.

Just another story on the shallow, empty lives of New Yorkers yearning for significance.

Self-absorbed much? Yes they are.

Quote: “When you step out into the unknown anything is possible in your life.”

People pay $100 an hour to hear drivel like that? Shoot, I'll say that crap for $50/hour, or $25/hour if they get nakked & EDH can sit in on the session.

My Favorite: She offered advice from some of the “600 self-help books” she said she has read.

600 self-help books!? Dayem. Would have been cheaper to just watch this.; 9/19/09, 10:41 PM
Kylos said...: She doesn't get nakked, but buffy the vampire slayer does. I'm really not sure what that was supposed to signify.; 9/19/09, 10:47 PM
tjl said...: Sera Beak in a quiet moment at her bedroom altar in San Francisco.
[photo caption accompanying NYT article].
I'd roll my eyes except nothing surprises me anymore.
The final word on the frivolity and narcissism of the core NYT demographic.; 9/19/09, 10:54 PM
Angst said...: "Some of them call me an oracle.
Some call me a guru.. "

Some people call me Maurice,
'Cause I speak of the pompatus
of love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06toc4GX6bE; 9/19/09, 10:57 PM
JAL said...: Marianne Williamson is not the author of A Course in Miracles.

Just fact checking the NYT.; 9/19/09, 11:04 PM
Mark Daniels said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/19/09, 11:25 PM
Mark Daniels said...: "Pay me to bring out your inner narcissist."; 9/19/09, 11:25 PM
bagoh20 said...: I have never been bored enough to even consider such crap.

C'mon people you can't find a better way to spend time and money? Think charity, or even lighting cigars with C-notes.; 9/19/09, 11:28 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh, I call BS. Those dames still drink. A lot. In secret.; 9/19/09, 11:41 PM
bagoh20 said...: "She offered advice from some of the 600 self-help books” she said she has read."

That's one per week for 11-1/2 years. Who would ask such an obsessed person for advice on how to live. She obviously is a slow learner and has no clue.; 9/20/09, 12:30 AM
Beth said...: Do you think they take a week to read?; 9/20/09, 12:32 AM
Kirk Parker said...: Good point, Beth, although the cynic wonders if they even need to be read at all, after the first dozen or so.

wv: tenesca -- don't have any idea what it is, but it oughta be a trade name for something.; 9/20/09, 1:25 AM
Hector Owen said...: "Why not create a business out of absolutely nothing but bullshit?"

Why not, indeed. It's worked well enough for Al Gore.; 9/20/09, 1:31 AM
blake said...: "Why not create a business out of absolutely nothing but bullshit?"

Everybody's doin' it!!; 9/20/09, 2:03 AM
rhhardin said...: preaching to eager audiences, mostly female.

Women can produce their own meds for the meditation blanket.; 9/20/09, 2:04 AM
Jason said...: Why not create a business out of absolutely nothing but bullshit?

And you! A law professor!; 9/20/09, 3:16 AM
sargon said...: Too funny. The "finding my divine spark" put me on the floor. Paul of Tarsus probably has some advice on that spark business.; 9/20/09, 5:38 AM
Chuckles said...: Oh, ye of little faith...; 9/20/09, 6:35 AM
bearbee said...: "Why not create a business out of absolutely nothing but bullshit?"

Everybody's doin' it!!

It's the economy.

"If you build it they will come."

"There's one born every minute."; 9/20/09, 7:12 AM
The Drill SGT said...: “Take action once a day to do something that ignites your life.”

I have a better piece of advice for these young twerps. It came from a fictional Army Platoon SGT, but several real life ones I have had gave the same classic stoic advice:

"Every day, do one task you don't want to do and that doesn't have to be done yet."

in other words, face the difficulties and get on with your life; 9/20/09, 7:13 AM
traditionalguy said...: Is this just a Scientology spin-off? Money for personality re-structuring by irresponsable women? Not that there is anything wrong with that. Free health care can pay for all the Mental health issues that will follow indulging in this innocent fun.; 9/20/09, 7:14 AM
dick said...: And check out this article from the Boston Globe - a yoga class on the town green for international peace gets denied and the woman won't give up - plus she does not even live in the town:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2009/09/20/yoga_group_selectmen_in_spat_over_use_of_nh_town_common/; 9/20/09, 7:19 AM
Bissage said...: I very much enjoyed Donna B.’s 10:08 comment.; 9/20/09, 7:50 AM
Bissage said...: I had an intro to psych professor who was disdainful of psychotherapy and she said it amounted to little more than “friendship for hire.”

After all these years I still remember that, probably because I was such a big fan of “The Bob Newhart Show.”; 9/20/09, 7:56 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: What to do? What to do? Oh shoot, of course I'm gonna bite,...but in iddo biddy pieces: This is the lady's house and I don't want to gross anybody out, as I further relish the taste of NewAge blood. O.K., no - this is good, because the NYT just provided the set-up, right?

Can we agree theirs was an almost note-perfect portrayal of NewAge's image being "sold"? I just want us to be clear, that we're all talking about the same phenomena, here, as I start you back down this same path for a moment. Where was that I said I'm taking you? Down this same path. Come on, Althouse readers - no pictures, no swearing, no jokes, no nothin' - finally:

I'm going to explain to you what The Macho Response is all about.

This NewAge stuff is "bullshit", correct? It's writers, while mainstreaming, have been regularly rising to, and holding, the top of The New York Times Best Seller List for decades - but there's nothing worth investigating (or otherwise bothering yourselves about) going on over there. Sure, it was The New York Times that also provided us with the example of Jennifer Macaluso-Gilmore who's read “600 self-help books”, which seems a bit obsessive for the banalities of NewAge, but whatever. And, on the page, another woman sounds like Raymond Shaw as she's practically chanting “We need this guidance and we are searching for this guidance.” at $180 bucks-a-pop, even. In a recession. With Obama handling this recession. I mean, whoa people. For something so apparently nonsensical and trivial, NewAge sure gets a reaction out of some people,..."mostly female". You know, like, Quite the Reaction.

Weird, huh? But, still, you're supposed to regard such passionate behavior as nothing. You guys with me?; 9/20/09, 8:17 AM
KCFleming said...: Donna's comment was sublime.

All of these folks, the jedis, the yogis, the New Agers, are searching for God in all the wrong places.

And given their hubris and general ignorance, they are repeating the same searches made over centuries, mistaking it for novel insight, and are unaware of the risk for evil.

It is, as in times past, a spiritual call borne of an economic crisis that spawned social upheaval. Prior cycles have ended badly. And this New Age cult will not be helpful when the shit hits the fan.; 9/20/09, 8:28 AM
traditionalguy said...: Crack...The path always goes the same as the late 1960s---first Rebel against legitimate authority of the Church and other institutions and live free---but life does not work without some authority around---so create an illegitimate authority--- and then that illegitimate authority must then be supported with spiritual power from the occult sources. It is like a law of gravity that recognises the spiritual forces at work around us. The antidote begins with a prophet in the Elijah tradition, like you, and ends with true authority being re-submitted to once men's minds have been freed from the delusions that occult teachings have implanted in them.; 9/20/09, 9:02 AM
Anonymous said...: "Free health care can pay for all the Mental health issues that will follow indulging in this innocent fun."

Actually, traditionalguy, Congress in TARP 1 mandated that mental health care be covered in our individual policies. My coverage now includes it, and my premium has gone up! Now when I get depressed about the state of the nation, I can get treatment.

Thanks, Congress! The government knows best.; 9/20/09, 9:30 AM
Methadras said...: Nature abhors a vacuum. Therefore she is fulfilling a niche by sucking in idiots who believe her effluvial nonsense.; 9/20/09, 12:12 PM
kentuckyliz said...: Protestants going on about rebelling against the authority of the Church just cracks me up.

HELLO!!!

Does no one have an irony meter?!; 9/20/09, 12:32 PM
Bissage said...: (1) Painting for kentuckyliz.

(2) ”Waltz for Debby.”

(3) Love for toffee.; 9/20/09, 3:09 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: A woman recently hired Alibis & Paybacks to publicly embarrass her ex-husband.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-revenge19-2009sep19,0,6530579.story?page=1

_________; 9/20/09, 4:03 PM
Laura(southernxyl) said...: One realizes that none of this stuff is new.

From Edith Wharton's Twilight Sleep:

An hour later Pauline, refreshed and invigorated, descended the Inspirational Healer's brown-stone doorstep with a springing step. It had been worth while breaking three or four engagements to regain that feeling of moral freedom. Why had she never heard of Alvah Loft before? His method was so much simpler than the Mahatma's: no eurythmics, gymnastics, community life, no mental deep-breathing, or long words to remember. Alvah Loft simply took out your frustrations as if they'd been adenoids; it didn't last ten minutes, and was perfectly painless. Pauline had always felt that the Messiah who should reduce his message to tabloid form would outdistance all the others; and Alvah Loft had done it. He just received you in a boarding-house back-parlour, with bunches of pampas-grass on the mantelpiece, while rows of patients sat in the front room waiting their turn. You told him what was bothering you, and he said it was just a frustration, and he could relieve you of it, and make it so that it didn't exist, by five minutes of
silent communion. And he sat and held you by the wrist, very lightly, as if he were taking your temperature, and told you to keep your eyes on the Ella Wheeler Wilcox line-a-day on the wall over his head. After it was over he said: "You're a good subject. The frustrations are all out. Go home, and you'll hear something good before dinner. Twenty-five dollars." And a pasty-faced young man with pale hair, who was waiting in the passage, added: "Pass on, please," and steered Pauline out by the elbow.; 9/20/09, 7:13 PM
vnjagvet said...: I can just hear her inner guru saying:

Do you mean a wet bird does fly at night?; 9/20/09, 7:27 PM
traditionalguy said...: Ky Liz...You have a good point. But it was Henry VIII who did it, Honest I was in Philadelphia.; 9/20/09, 7:48 PM