"Shirley Ghostman" Demonstrates a Dilemma in Skepticism
August 13th, 2008
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“Shirley Ghostman” claims to be a powerful psychic, seer, clairvoyant, medium and many other things that don’t exist. In reality, however, Shirly Ghostman is just a character in an over-the-top spoof show. He goes around playing up the ruse to unsuspecting audiences and does readings. The spoof is a bit akin to Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character. It’s a great parody and it can be extremely funny to see psychics lampooned to the unsuspecting.
It does illustrate a problem facing skeptics, however. How does one tell a joke from someone who legitimately believes in a paranormal phenomona? It’s harder than one might think because no matter how outlandish the spoof it, it’s difficult to be certain that it’s not a real belief. I have to admit that there have been more than a few times when I was simply unable to figure out whether or not something was a joke or whether someone was actually serious about trying to sell it. I’m still not sure which way the Phrenology page goes. Is it all a joke? Could someone really honestly be pushing a concept so absurd? I honestly could go either way with it.
Here’s a video which had me literally laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair. It was shown at TAM this past June and it shows a segment “Shirley Versus the Skeptics” in which Christopher French is the skeptic in the hot seat. After I had a chance to talk to Christopher French, who joined me and several others for lunch after the events. He explained that during the taping he really wasn’t sure what to make of it. He suspected that it was likely a joke because it was so over the top and ridiculous, but wasn’t absolutely sure.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Amazing Meeting, Humor, Paranormal, media. 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.
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August 13th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
“The series was dropped after Wooton (as Ghostman) appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. During the show, which also had Nicole Kidman and David Schwimmer as guests, he made a number of jokes referring to ‘Jews, cancer patients and Hitler’[1].
The resulting controversy resulted in the BBC being forced to apologise to 350 viewers.”
I sense a genuine free speech failure.
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August 13th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
That was pretty funny. The guy in the second video seemed to be taking it very seriously. I don’t think he realized it was a spoof.
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August 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Stingray said:
One of the biggest issues with the BBC (and I think with society in general for that matter) is that they are tasked with providing varied points of view and content while promoting freedom of expression, but they are also supposed to avoid hate speech, insulting statements, statements which offend people or groups or which are considered generally offensive or distasteful. Yet, they do not seem to realize these two tasks are mutually exclusive.
The point of the show was to be a ridiculous parody of a psychic and it was very good while it lasted.
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August 13th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Stingray said:
Bah. I don’t know about a free speech issue. Don’t they say “he who pays the piper calls the tunes”?
I mean if the stuff he said was bad enough to get viewers all upset and maybe even advertisers then its a business decision or maybe they decided it was bad for the image. It’s not like free speech gets you a free pass to say stuff at your job and not get fired or to say stuff on a show and now have the owner of the station decide to fire you, right?
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August 14th, 2008 at 12:28 am
Lord Helmet said:
The BBC does not have advertisers. It’s a government chartered organization that is supported by a combination of grants and funding from licenses (in the UK you have to pay for a television license for each TV) and a small amount of revenue from royalties on their content shown abroad.
It’s not a private company like other television stations. As RBR explained, they’re supposed to be an open forum for free speech and opposing viewpoints. They’re also supposed to maintain good standards for quality and content and not be too offensive and such. I can see how that is a problem or at least a fine line to walk. I disagree with this too because this guy was clearly just being over the top as a character. Also, I applaud anyone who lampoons and disrespects psychics.
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August 14th, 2008 at 1:17 am
HAHA! The Colonel Sanders thing was pretty damn funny!
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August 14th, 2008 at 2:28 am
There are more videos of him on youtube. you should search some of them are very funny.
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June 18th, 2010 at 12:59 am
That was very interesting. Here is a great and clean joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3j7uSbccSc
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