First it was Montel Williams, now another major media promoter of psychics fraud is leaving the airwaves.   Larry King has announced that he will be leaving his show on CNN.   Of course,  his mind left the show some time in the mid 1990’s.   Larry King, for those who live outside the US, is a TV show host who does a lot of interviews and generally doesn’t contribute much to them, but yet has managed to be a major force on television for many years.

Decidedly non-skeptical, Larry King has allowed his show to be used by everyone from Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine movement to Sylvia Browne and other self-proclaimed psychics.   His interviews tend to pander to them, even kissing their collective asses.   Whether it be UFO’s or claims of powers to find missing persons, Larry King can’t seem to see reality from lies and lets his television show become the platform for all kinds of bull.   To skeptics… well, we’re lucky we ever get represented on his show.

In this clip you’ll notice James Randi pauses for a moment after Larry King states that Sylvia Browne “described the accused villain pretty well.”   In fact, she had not described him well at all and had said Shawn Hornesbeck was dead, despite his being found alive years later.   This interview was actually done during The Amazing Meeting 5 and as such, I was able to speak to Randi afterward.   He paused because he was waiting for the punchline, so to speak, expecting Larry King to say something more, since his statement was so absurd.   Had I been in that situating, I’m not even sure I would have known how to react.

I can offer another personal story to shed some light on what kind of pandering Larry King is prone to:
Shortly after this, Larry again hosted a “psychic” to defend Sylvia Browne. His guest stated that psychic visions are not always clear and that is why sometimes things like these errors happen.

The show took phone calls and I called in. Actually, I put the number on my speed dial and dialed repeatedly. It took more than 50 calls but I finally got through and talked to one of the producers who screened the calls.

This was how the conversation went. This is paraphrased, because I didn’t know I’d even get through and did not have the ability to record the phone call at the time, but I did take some notes. Therefore, although paraphrased, this is a fairly accurate representation of the call:

Screener: “So what did you want to ask?”
Me: “Well I just wanted to know how she could be so wrong. I mean, she was very speffic. it’s not like it could have been hazy. This is not apples to oranges, it’s like saying you see the Chrysler Building and can count the windows but in fact you see an orange.”
Screener: -chuckles- “Yes, she was pretty far off, huh? But what did you want to ask for your question?”
Me: “Well, I just would like to know if she could explain how a vision could be so speffic and yet so wrong like that. What’s the deal with that?”
Screener: “We really can’t ask her that kind of question, but thanks for calling”

But not anymore. Larry King is now retiring to spend more time with his wife. His 7th wife, by the way, who filed for divorce this year but then apparently changed her mind and then attempted suicide a month later. Yep, seems Larry might want to consider working on that relationship a bit more. Although I’m not sure if being around more will make it better or worse.

---

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Amazing Meeting, Bad Science, Culture, Misc, media, personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---

View blog reactions