Our good friend Robert Lancaster, who hangs out at http://stopsylvia.com/ sent me this observation:
Last year saw the end of the Montel Williams Show, Sylvia Browne's primary media platform for many years.
Last night was the final episode of Larry King Live, where Browne appeared once or twice a year until her failure in the Shawn Hornbeck case was revealed. After that, I don't think she was ever a LKL guest again (whether by his choice or hers).
And this is the final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show, long a bastion of woo (her recent "John of God" lovefest being the most recent example, though she has sung the praises of various "speak-to-the-dead" frauds and AltMed scams as well. Her Oprah Winfrey Network starts up on Jan 1 2011 though, and time will tell how woo-friendly THAT will be.
So, is the world of TV Talk becoming less wooful, or am I just doing some wishful thinking here?
As they say, “We’ll see!” – but they also say, “Once a woo-woo, always a woo-woo!” Larry has little of that in him, I'd say, though he's erhaps overly-charmed by far-out persons and ideas. But remember, Oprah Winfrey is the one who gave super-quack Dr. Mehmet Oz his own network TV show, and has encouraged various celebrities to run on about the very thoroughly discredited idea that autism is caused by vaccinations… Now that she has her very own network, will Sylvia and Edward be the next recipients of their own shows?
It's discouraging that Ms. Winfrey, certainly one of the most influential single personalities in modern television, tends to accept every crackpot notion that a hungry publicity flack offers her. As long as it's fantastic, New Age-ish, and has a few buzz-words like "vibrations" or "quantum" to embellish it, it's attractive to Oprah, and it pops up on her show -- an absolute guarantee of success. I did a couple of Oprah shows many years ago -- before she'd attained her present fame -- and though I didn't fail to get my points across, I found that her staff did everything they could to make my appearances difficult. I was not rehearsed, I received no fact-sheet about those with whom I was sharing the stage, and it was rather obvious that everything was being done to "please the boss" -- regardless of how the show content, or the reputation of Oprah herself, was affected.
That's dangerous, Oprah...