(Display Name not set)July 2006 Archives

"The Messengers," a new eight-part series on The Learning Channel featuring 10 of the nation’s up-and coming inspirational speakers, left me somewhat less than inspired. In the premiere episode, the contestants are left to live for 24 hours on L.A.’s skid row, after which they are given a few minutes to expound upon the night’s chosen topic in front of the voting, studio audience. This aspirational American Idol has its own panel of judges: Richard Greene, a communication coach dubbed "The Master of Charisma" by the Sunday Times (UK), and Robert V. Shuller, pastor of emergent ministries of the Crystal Cathedral Ministries. The winning “messenger” will be rewarded with a publishing contract and a television special on TLC.

The show attempts to establish a sense of gravitas with its opening montage of Buddhist monks praying, rabbis reading from the Torah, and yogis practicing their craft to the tune of Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus,” as interpreted by the late Johnny Cash. The contestants range from an ex-Raiderette cheerleader turned spiritual seeker to several Christian pastors.

We never really got to know the contestants before they were taken to skid row, and so watching them try to connect with the homeless felt prurient and almost exploitive, in a way. As one angry woman said when a contestant approached her, “Get your hands off me! We don’t have homes... you do! I’ve been on the streets since I was 11 year old.”

Back in the studio, we hear each person’s take on that night’s topic of “charity.” Both the pastors, Robert Rutherford and Darryl Van Leer, do very well, and Angelica Osborne, the quirky apartment manager from Alabama, is clearly a front-runner. Platitudes were abundant (“Charity is not what I can do for this homeless man, but what he can do for me.”), but there were also some lovely turns of phrases and some truly engaging deliveries. I was disappointed, however, that we didn’t get to see the full speeches of at least three contestants, including Iman Mafi, a Muslim youth lecturer, and Zahava Zaidoff, a former Orthodox Jew, and that their deliveries were so short.

I wholeheartedly agree with panelist Greene that rhetoric is quickly becoming a lost art, although I might not go as far as to say that it’s “important for the soul of our country.” Then again, I’m not “The Master of Charisma.” But does inspirational rhetoric make good television? So attuned are we to the vicious “vote-them-off-the-island” mentality of reality television, that it somehow feels wrong when a reality show pits people against each other in a spoken-word battle of feel-good messages.

Perhaps the producers counted on Floyd Nolan, student of spiritual development, to shake things up. Floyd strutted onto the stage and sat down, saying: “I don’t have a lot of time and that’s mostly because I have to pee.” To which Richard Greene responded, “You call that a speech?!” and waved his hand dismissively (or at least the film was edited to appear that way). Unfortunately, Floyd was voted off and no other “character” has yet emerged. While the format is odd, the show is intriguing in what it is trying to accomplish.

If a rose by any other name is still a rose, then is Mr. T without his miles of gold chains still Mr. T?

The AP reports that Mr. T, star of "The A-team," Rocky movies and his own eponymously named Saturday morning cartoon, is saying bye-bye to the bling after experiencing the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

"As a spiritual man, I felt it would be a sin against my God for me to wear all that gold again because I spent a lot of time with the less fortunate," the AP quotes the actor as saying at the Television Critics Association's summer meeting.

"I saw some, I call it 'sorry celebrities.' They'll go down there [New Orleans] and hook up with the people to take a photo-op. I said, 'How disgusting.' If you're not going to go down there with a check and a hammer and a nail to help the people, don't go down there."

And that's the kind of unvarnished opinion that the former Lawrence Tero will bestow upon viewers of his new advice show "I Pity the Fool," premiering on TV Land in October.

Adam is your typical 19-year-old. He likes to work out, has tattoos, and goes out on dates. But Adam, as it turns out, is not just a typical university student, but a famous Canadian healer--"The Dream Healer."

Last night, John Quinones of ABC's "Primetime Live" took a closer look at this suburban Canadian cutie's claims to heal people of cancer, immune disorders, and other maladies. Quinones is no stranger to reporting on faith healers, having done a prominent report on the South American psychic surgeon/faith healer John of God in 2005.

But Adam claims not to be a faith healer. In fact, though he diagnoses patients by looking at their auras, he claims there's nothing spiritual about what he does, that it's all based in science, and that he is simply manipulating people's energies, fixing breaks in the flow of their energy. But despite his claims, he certainly had what one might call a spiritual experince while gaining his skills. According to Adam, at the age of 15, he had a vision that told him to go to an island, where he had mystical mind-meld with a large black bird that imparted the scientific mysteries of the universe to him. After that, he cured his mother's MS.

Quinones and the ABC cameras were allowed to witness Adam's technique at one of his sold-out seminars. Taking place completely in the dark, Adam goes into a sort of trance and is able to see people's energies and fixes them, moving his hands in the air as if he's actually rearranging building blocks.

What Adam does, frankly, is nothing new. Acupuncture and acupressure reportedly release blockages of chi ("energy"), practicioners of Reiki claim to work with energy centers of the body, and creative visualization is a mainstream practice. But, what makes Adam different is that he essentially "cured" someone on live television. When rock-n-roll pioneer Ronnie Hawkins was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a filmmaker decided to document his last days. What the film ended up documenting was Hawkins' amazing recovery--the tumor had disappeared--and he attributed his miraculous recovery to Adam.

And it doesn't hurt that Adam's got the looks of a teen idol--the perfect MTV mystic.

Quinones points out that the cancerous tumors "cured" by Adam had never actually been biopsied, and he interviewed physicists who said that science simply doesn't work the way that Adam says it does. They do a test to see if Adam can change the reporter's brainwaves, based on previous tests that showed he could. And, of course, the ABC crew also follows several attendees of the seminar to see how Adam's work has helped them. In the end, it's a mixed bag, but one woman, whose soldier husband was severly wounded in Afghanistan, simply won't give up on her husband and believes that Adam is helping him.

Which leads to Quinones' final point: That even if Adam is not doing one substantive thing, people's belief that he is may spur the mind-body connection into healing the body. Again, this is not a ground-breaking idea and even Adam alludes to the mind-body connection several times.

Adam is not a particularly elegant speaker or a studied salesman. In fact, his own father, an engineer, doubted his abilities as first, but is now his manager. His sister picks on him for not healing her zits, and he geniunely seems like a normal guy--nothing like the stereotypical faith healers seen in the movies. And that's why this report was so anti-climactic as far as television goes. Unlike John of God, who--avert your eyes if you're squeamish--was scraping peoples' eyeballs with a scalpel and sticking forceps deep into peoples' noses, to name just a few of the "surgeries" he does, Adam simply fiddled with their energies and told them to do visualizations. And he seemed to actually agree with Quinones on some points.

But Americans will be able to judge for themselves soon enough: Adam is slated to begin an American worskshop tour at the end of August.

What does it mean for a superstar's career when shilling for a charity during a concert generates as much controversy as wearing a crown of thorns and strapping yourself to a wooden cross during a concert?

No stranger to controversy, Madonna is once again raising eyebrows, but not for her usual on-stage antics. MSNBC.com's Scoop reports that the Kabbalah-crazed Material Girl is raising eyebrows with her promotion of "Raising Malawi," a group that is helping orphans in the AIDS-ravaged nation and is connected to the Kabbalah Centre, with many prominent Kabblaists on the board. Founded by the Kabbalah Centre's Rabbi Berg, the charity, according to its website, provides these children with food, medical care, clean drinking water, and pychosocial care. Additionally, the program parters with local agencies to improve sustainability in agriculture, medicine and education ... a la the Peace Corps.

So far, so good.

It seems that things start to get controversial when it comes to "empowering" the children. "Raising Malawi" is currently working with local teachers on a curriculum that integrates the principles of the Kabbalah Center's "Spirituality for Kids" Program, which the site calls "a non-religious, unique educational program," but critics disagree.

Call it indoctrination, but, like it or not, charities with a "missionary" statement are nothing new. And while proselytization paranoia is rife in this age of ecumenism, the charity is never officially connected to Kabbalah on its website, raising many suspicions. According to the group's website, "SFK is a unique educational program for children and families from at-risk communities that teaches them how to overcome the challenges of poverty, violence, drug abuse, and a host of other social ills."

According to Scoop, Madonna once said, "It gives children the tools to deal with life's challenges. My daughter is learning about her ego and how to control it. Who'd have thought a child could learn that?" Kind of ironic since Madge got where she is today thanks to her own ego.