Can a psychic be a bully in disguise?

(I don't often post chunks of my journal, but this time I felt the need. Recently I risked sending some of my writings on psychic phenomena to a "professional medium", a former college professor of mine who had set up shop on an island with his own church. I was astonished at the tone of his response, which accused me of making the whole thing up, manipulating him, going out of my depth, and that the messages I received had no psychic content whatsoever. I felt myself being yanked down, and not knowing why. He concluded by telling me "I'm saying all this as a therapist, of course", an apparent swipe at my credibility/mental health. I used to think a psychic adviser would have some kind of sensitivity, but then I realized that ego, exaggerated ability and Long Island Medium-type manipulation of the public can be all part of the syndrome. 

In rhetoric, a tautology (from Greek ταὐτός, "the same" and λόγος, "word/idea") is a logical argument constructed in such a way, generally by repeating the same concept or assertion using different phrasing or terminology, that the proposition as stated is logically irrefutable, while obscuring the lack of evidence or valid reasoning supporting the stated conclusion. (A rhetorical tautology should not be confused with a tautology in propositional logic.)^[a]

Then last night I watched a 20-20 program about a psychic who stole literally millions of dollars from a mentally-challenged man, cleaning him out while leaving him so brainwashed that he still defended her. She went so far as to present him with a  "son" conceived through artificial insemination, named Georgio Armani, who was not his son at all. It was monstrous fraud, and an extreme, but pretending to have ability often means taking advantage of others and undermining whatever strength they have. That was the tipping point for me, so I decided to post this after all. Beware, folks, they are out there, and many of them are completely ruthless.)

I think my former friend destroyed any joy I took in my recent revelations, which I only wanted to share with someone who knew what I was talking about. His arrogant dismissal of my interest and ideas could not have been more condescending. “Speaking as a therapist” translates as: I know you’re having childish delusions, whereas MY messages are always right because I am the great medium, and you’re not. He even throws the fear of ghosties and ghoulies at me to demean and intimidate and diminish me, and to make himself feel powerful. He probably just tells himself I’m mentally ill and playing with fire and making stuff up. You have to have advanced degrees to approach this subject, and if you don't, you won't be invited to the Psychic Kiwanis Club banquet at the end of the year.

That accusation of making stuff up, as a survivor of abuse and one who was totally discredited by her family of origin, is particularly excruciating, and he knows all about that! We've talked about it enough. I am reminded of letting him see just a short excerpt from A Singing Tree, my first completed novel, which I don’t think he even read, and his comment, “I think you have to be very, very careful, Margaret, or it will just be seen as some sort of zany soap opera.” I think that is the worst single comment I have ever heard about my work, and I don’t know why I gave him a second chance. When I objected because I was devastated, he just defended what he had said, implying I was too touchy to be a published author and didn’t have the perception to judge it. He was only trying to help me, after all, and I should have been grateful. The novel wasn’t published, but was considered by Random House, Doubleday, Raincoast and a number of others and taken very seriously. Not. A. Zany. Soap. Opera. Nobody else said that.

His written apology several years (!) later was of the flavour of “it triggered all my issues”, i. e. “look what you made me do”. It wasn’t an apology at all. I put up with this crap for years because I thought he had some interesting ideas. In recent years he has hardened into the Long Island Medium of the west coast. It’s a tautology, something which neatly proves itself, and anything outside that tautology is bogus, suspect, or up for ridicule. He also heavily favors the “I’ve got two Masters degrees and a PhD, and you don’t” argument. It's been my experience that academics have the shallowest perceptions (and biggest egos) of any other single group. Their knowledge is completely conventional and often displayed for prestige and as a bulwark against criticism. How can you question a man with two Masters degrees and a PhD?

Anyway, the psychic thing, even if it was just tuning in on certain energies, was interesting to me.  I wasn't looking to have it validated, merely sharing it. He did, after all, tell me I had "undeveloped psychic potential"(and we won't get into THAT one here - I have been studying it for my entire life). In fact, up until now he seemed to be fairly interested in my exploration and felt it had some validity. I took a risk, and (as with most risks) it bombed and he hurt me, I will admit it, but mostly he made me very angry. For once in my  entire life, I did not soften, and soften, and soften my reply to carefully extract all my anger. I told him what I thought, which is that he has been at this too long and has become godlike to too many people. THAT is when leaders become dangerous, when they can no longer see their own limitations, and especially when they begin to “diss” other people to feel stronger in themselves and to shore up their "superior" abilities. 

I soon got some sort of reply from him and wondered what on earth I would have to gain by reading it. So I deleted it unread, along with everything else I had ever sent or received from him. His name is now off my contacts list forever. I no longer care about pampering his ego by listening to any sort of defense of what he said. I knew more putdowns were in the works. It was abuse. How do I know? You know when someone throws mud in your face. It is indeed a nasty sensation.

POST-POST BLOG POST POST: The last time I looked up this guy's name on the internet, there was absolutely nothing. As per usual, now, a few years later, he's everywhere, including interviews in all sorts of psychic publications. All the pictures look the same - he has a sort of Criswell expression now, a Svengali look that I never ever saw there before. It's what they call image-crafting. Oh my. He HAS changed, and maybe I see now why my message was so casually thrown back in my face (but then, he was just giving me his professional opinion, which is accepted by everyone - so it must be right - because it is accepted by everyone - so it must be right.)

"You had me at hello"

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The day Marty Scorsese became my friend. . . sort of

I don't have time to be writing this cuzzadafact that my hubby and me will be leaving in a minute to have brunch at a Chinese restaurant we love. We're celebrating something amazing that happened to me last night, something closely connected to my novel The Glass Character, but I can't tell you what it is yet. Let the egg incubate for a while.

It's these phony Facebook pages. Yes, I know, they are probably ubiquitous and usually involve big Hollywood stars. I honestly wonder how many big Hollywood stars have TIME to keep a personal FB page. Anyway, one day a while back I stumbled on a so-called page for Martin Scorsese. There were at least half-a-dozen sites for him, mostly fan sites you'd follow.

I got curious. Hey, what if one of them IS his real FB page? It looks like you can send a friend request.  I sent.

Months went by and I forgot all about it. Today  I got a notice in my inbox that, yes, Martin Scorsese was now my friend! I was absolutely flabbergasted. Soon I'd be hobnobbing with all the moguls and glamor-pusses of the Silver Screen. Yeeee-owdimus!

But then, I looked a little more closely.

The whole page looked a little "off", somehow. There wasn't much information of any kind. But it plainly  said "in a relationship with Marina Filoc". I tried to find out anything about her, but could only determine she could not speak English and worked at a shiatsu clinic.

One of Marty's "posts" pictured Billy Wilder's grave with a caption that read something like, Do not say I am stupid, am only writer. There followed a FLOOD of fawning, ingratiating comments about the post, praising Marty's articulate brilliance. "Am only writer"! Look how he plays with the idiom, ignores it, turns it on its ear! Look how he stands up to the mundane rules of grammar! He is a genius! It went on and on. Oh, Mr. Scorsese, thank you for allowing me to be your friend, I love your work always, I love Taxi Driver, is my favorit movie when it come on theTV at night, etc. etc., hundreds of them.

Uh.

People.

It's not him.

Scorsese has been married to the same woman for years, and her name ain't Marina Filoc. Marina Filoc, who on one site stated that she working her English ver hard to improve, is trying to cash in by hitching her rickety wagon to his oblivious star. Surely if she's Marty's main squeeze, she's going to have lots of attention, plenty of offers for. . . whatever.  I guess there are no rules against that sort of thing, against trying to siphon something off in case all that drooling drivel slops over the edge of the bowl. 

But it does make you wonder how many other FB pages are completely bogus. After all, it's not strung very tight, is it? You can pretty much be anyone you want to. A 20-year-old shiatsu therapist can suddenly become one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood history, and instantly have thousands of people fawning all over her and believing her without question.

Given the level of discernment we see in the Facebook community, who's going to know the difference?


http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Life's Lesson: you're an asshole!

(An excerpt from one of those advice columns, it doesn't matter which one)

October 23, 2012 - Give YOURSELF the chance to start fresh Nearly two years ago, I broke some dishes on our loft’s concrete floor. I left. My wife broke the rest of the dishes. She also broke the kitchen tap and didn’t know how to turn it off. She called the super who told her to call the cops. She lied and said I did everything. I got arrested, got legal aid, pleaded guilty, and got 18 months’ probation for "mischief under $5000." Calls from my probation officer to my wife, to ensure my possessions were returned, went un-answered. We operated a business together. I was its founder in 1998 prior to re-incorporation in 2005. Now, I have next to nothing, struggle with making ends meet, and trying to get a job that doesn’t receive anonymous phone calls that get me sent home. I have no money for a lawyer; get no help/sympathy from Police, or Probation. The judge who sentenced me said I’d get my possessions back. We’re not divorced. My probation disallows direct or indirect contact, unless by lawyer, till the end of November. I was told that some of my possessions were sold. My wife told the courts/police that I worked for her at her company. I never received a paycheck since she re-incorporated in 2005. I was her biggest cheerleader and found nearly 100% of the new clients, while she managed accounts, lied to me about the lack of progress on them, while telling clients that I was to blame when accounts’ issues arose. It's like I had no idea who I married. I totally screwed up and put her at the company’s helm. Sometimes I feel I should move to another province, but I don't want to leave my family. I've had a lot of therapy, but I can't seem to choose to accept this and move forward… as if the universe won’t let me heal until I figure out what I’m supposed to learn from all this. Used and Defamed   You’ve written to a relationship advice person, not a lawyer, so I’m looking through the lens of your relationship with yourself. You even close your account with an inward view… about being stuck, unable to heal from the whole episode, unable to move forward. The issues of your lost possessions, along with business and other past “screw-ups,” must now be kept separate from your sense of self, of inner strengths and abilities, and of having a future. You need income. You need your family. And you need to regain self-respect. You’ve served the probation time. Hanging on to despair about your stuff, or the company, keeps you mired in sadness and defeat. Legal Aid workers can ask the court to now demand the return of your remaining possessions. It’s a practical matter; your self-esteem does NOT rest on it. Focus on what’s needed immediately, which is a job. If anonymous calls start, inform Police you’re being harassed. Give yourself a fresh chance at the future.     Tip of the Day: Even significant mistakes can be put in the past, if you believe in yourself. Blogger's Comments. EARRRGHHHHHH. I am old enough to remember the ancient dinosaur advice columnists such as Ann Landers and - who was that other one, her sister? The stuff that ran then was pretty mild, such as the earth-shaking issue of how should you hang the toilet paper roll, with the end of it facing in or out. She was coy about anything sexual, and the really raw problems were - well, I'm not even sure there WERE problems like this way back in what they now call "the day". It's not so much the appalling mess this guy has got himself into - doing a lot of heavy blaming for what strikes me as an obscenely abusive pas de deux - but the pat, ribbon-tied advice this "expert" gives him, the shallow "positive attitude and self-esteem" stuff that is so easy to dispense in a world that is becoming more superficial and less literate with every passing day. I have a feeling there is a lot more going on here than this guy is revealing, just from the menacing subtext which seems to murmur the abusive tyrant's sweet refrain: "Look what you made me do." What appals me even more is the way women seem to be sucked in by these frightening losers, as if they have no protective emotional radar whatsoever. Maybe I watch too much Dateline. I don't know. But it happens over and over again, not just on some slick American TV show but right here in my own back yard. I wonder sometimes what sort of cushy self-esteem-oriented advice these rotters get that gives them license to go right back out there and find some more victims. What frightens me even more is this: more victims are never in short supply. In too many cases, women CHOOSE to be with men who are convicted criminals. They write them sweet letters on death row, even marry them, buying their well-practiced, totally self-serving line of bullshit that they were railroaded by the legal system and are in fact completely innocent. I once heard it said that a woman like this will walk into a room with 100 men in it, and gravitate immediately toward the one loser, the one on probation, the one with a secret wife stashed away, the one who can't help his rages because he's in the throes of a terrible addiction that he can't recover from because he was abused as a child, and furthermore, whatever is wrong with him is HER fault anyway, so how can she leave and stir up all his tragic abandonment issues? Women can be just as evil and slimy as men, can be sociopathic murderers and not bat an eyelash, but it seems the really elaborate, Byzantine stories of emotional destruction are man-to-woman. These guys don't need hand-holding or lectures on self-esteem. They don't need bullshit New Age therapy that tells them "the universe won't let them heal" until they figure out "what they are supposed to learn from all this". Jesus, give me a break. They are supposed to learn that they are assholes, and if they don't change their behaviour and their attitudes and KEEP them changed, they will always be assholes. But that's not the refrain we hear from therapy circles. First, I don't get this "universe" stuff, as if all the stars and galaxies revolve around ME, the mighty epicentre of all things. It reminds me of The Secret, that infamous crooked belief system spawned by sociopath James Ray, which claimed we can have anything we want (and isn't that the purpose of life, after all: to get what we want, particularly wealth?) just by wanting it. Even Oprah got down and kowtowed to this person, who obviously fed into her financial might-means-right philosophy.  In an insulting parody of a sacred native ritual, Ray brainwashed his followers into entering a cobbled-together, unsafe sweat lodge, an updated version of drinking the Koolaid, this time involving searing smoke and fatal fumes. I don't even think Galileo believed the universe was some sort of Big Daddy God-force that looked after him, wiped his nose and patted him on the back, spewing out "lessons" at regular intervals. I'm afraid such an entity does not exist. I used to ascribe to it, more or less, but I now believe that there is no one hovering above us that knows everything about us, that made us in the womb, etc. If there is a God, it's a totally impersonal force that was somehow ignited when life on earth began, then didn't know how to stop itself. The rest was up to the relentless forces of evolution. If there is a personal God, then it lives within us - hardly an original thought, but it's the only one I can adhere to after a personal crisis that nearly tore me to pieces - and it has become more imperative than ever that we listen to it. Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, I believe it compels us to love and care for one another in a way that can make a profound difference. If we think we can get something just by wanting it, try wanting sensitivity - wanting compassion - wanting grace. If I got a letter like this guy's,  and thank God I'm not one of those glib advice-spewers who generally have no qualifications at all to do what they are doing, I'm not sure what I'd say. How about, for starters: you're a creep, buddy, you're lying to me, and if SHE had a chance to speak she'd tell me a whole load of stuff you didn't say because you're a con and a sociopath who sucks people dry, then ruthlessly moves on. You can't say that, or you don't, because everyone has to learn to love themselves, even Jeffrey Dahmer types who strike me as more reptile than human.  Is there no such thing as true recovery? I know it exists, I've seen it, but it's hard work, it's long and discouraging and must be maintained day by day for the rest of your life. How many criminals and cons are willing to take on such a gruelling wilderness trudge when ripping people off and fucking people over is so much easier and even more personally gratifying? I get tired of it all. Tired of the bandaids plastered over cancer, the "stay positive", the basic falseness that keeps people from finding real recovery, the kind of recovery that generally speaking turns your guts slowly inside-out until you somehow find some semblance of personal authenticity.

The church at the corner of Gloria and Lloyd

I have a relationship with the unknown.

I mean the unknown unknown. I mean the what-the-hell-is-this, why am I experiencing all these strange coincidences (also known as "God's way of remaining anonymous"), all these strange happenings and feelings that make me wonder if there is indeed an Other Side.

My most laden experience, the one producing the richest vibrations, has been with Harold Lloyd. Since I began to research his life for my novel The Glass Character (just lately accepted for publication, to my delight), or even before that, I felt a weird sort of resonance with him. It reminded me of one of his funniest early films, Haunted Spooks, in which his thick black hair stands on end (a running gag created with electric current - I don't know how he survived it) when he sees a flour-covered little black kid running around like a baby ghost.

I suppose I should start at the beginning and recount the whole thing, all my experiences from early childhood, but I'd be here all day so I can only talk about last week., or at least the last few years. And that feeling, that feeling that "someone" is there, almost always on my left side, outside my body, in a sort of person-shaped bubble. Does he say anything? Not really, but I feel his presence or vibes or whatever-it-is I feel about people before I even see them.

In these visitations, he's always the older Harold, the never-mellowed Harold who remained fiercely interested in life, in women, and in a thousand different activities, some charitable, some just plain weird (such as taking something like half a millon 3D photos of naked women and paying them $50 each, which often included sex).  But when I feel a presence like this - and believe me, I realize that this could be my imagination - it's pure essence, as if I am sipping the person through a straw.

So what was/is Harold like? Hard to explain. A complex man who seemed simple, even thought of himself as simple. Was he interested in this sort of thing, in the other world? He was too practical for that, a Midwestern boy raised and baptised in fundamentalist Christianity in the Bible belt. And yet, and yet.

I don't know much about masonic orders or Shriners or any of that stuff, except that it involves funny hats and go-carts. It's mainly, as I see it, benevolent, but there are always rumors. Not only was Harold involved: he rose through the ranks of masonry (if that's what it's called) all the way to Imperial Potentate of the Shriners: and he looked decidedly un-silly  in that hat. 

But there are other things apart from Harold Lloyd, lots of things, hard to describe. Not just knowing when the phone will ring, but who is on the other end and (this is the signifcant part) what they are going to say. "Guessing" the name of my newborn niece before anyone told me. I'm not a psychic, don't get me wrong, and most people who call themselves psychics vastly overestimate their abilities (or are outright frauds, like that sickening, grating Long Island Medium on TLC, the biggest display of phony producer-driven "magic" I've ever had the misfortune to half-see before I bailed).

There's another part of it however. Though we're out of touch now, I was once close friends with a professional spiritualist medium, a university professor with two masters' degrees and a PhD in anthropology. I saw him perform his mediumship in a spiritualist church, a rapid blur of connected images that, to be honest, didn't make much sense to me, though the audience was quick to pick up meanings that may or may not have been there.

Then there was my violin teacher, a psychic healer steeped in the ancient, spooky traditions of Eastern European mysticism. This is strange territory and seems to tap in to things like werewolves and homunculi. He did healing on me, and it felt good, but I wonder now if it was really as transformative as it was supposed to be. He was a loving figure however, benevolent and eager to help people,  so I was never afraid of him or of his unusual ministrations. And yet, and yet, when I experienced a huge personal crisis in 2005, he wasn't there for me, and later on he accused me of abandoning him. This hurt me more than I can say.

I ran into a bulwark of belief that has always confounded me. Everything has to be a "lesson", everything has to  happen for a reason, even if in truth things are  just one big appalling blob of adversity. This is a subtle way, I can't help but feel, of saying "it's your fault", or, at very least, "you needed the lesson."  I won't even go into how inhuman this belief system is for people who have lost a child or otherwise experienced nearly-unbearable grief.

Are psychics and mediums and the like really in touch with some other dimension? Am *I* sometimes in touch, or is my imagination making my scalp prickle like Harold? I've seen auras, or certainly sensed them. No matter how phony someone's public act, I see through it in two seconds. This may just be the human sense that gives us a nose for these things, a survival skill.

And yet.

They say there are no coincidences, but the Lloyd synchronicity, which at one point was so thick I was getting four or five examples a day, seemed to be smearing butter all over my skepticism. I watched a little movie, a British comedy called The Wrong Box, and saw four examples of Lloyd - maybe five - in the credits, the names of the actors, the Tontine list which was the backbone of the whole thing. Face it, Lloyd is just not that common a name. Another time we were driving along the highway to somewhere and bisecting it was a road called Lloyd Avenue.

"That's stupid," I said to my husband. "There can't be a road just sitting there in the middle of nowhere. And especially not a Lloyd Avenue."

But then came the topper. I turned my head to the right and saw a huge brick building, also just sitting there, butted right up against the busy highway, totally out of place. I looked at the sign and "kvelled": it said Gloria Evangelical Temple.

Gloria was the name of Harold's first child. And there was her temple, right at the corner of Gloria and Lloyd.

Another time I was watching an old Twilight Zone episode and looked at the credits and saw  the name Suzanne Lloyd. That's the name of Harold's granddaughter, now CEO of Harold Lloyd Entertainment. It wasn't her, of course, but it was someone with the same name.

Just a coincidence? I! Don't! Think! So!

Things don't levitate by themselves or rise in the air, at least not so far,  but reality is sometimes a weird mobius strip playing endlessly and curving back on itself. Harold was an accomplished professional magician from boyhood (made money off it as a kid), even after he lost half his right hand in an accident. He could make things disappear, then reappear with an enigmatic smile.

There were the three gold beads.  A stupid story, really, but I've come this far, so I'll tell it anyway. I had a necklace made of tiny figures that were meant to represent my four grandchildren, and the beads were used as spacers. I had never owned anything like them. When I decided to mount the figures on a gold hoop earring and put it on a chain, something happened. One of the beads was missing. It just vanished. I don't remember dropping it. I got down on my hands and knees - it was doubtful I'd be able to match these, so I needed it back badly - and stayed down there a long time, going over every fibre of the rug.

Then I vacuumed the entire surface of the bedroom, sifting through all the dirt and fibres, then vacuumed again. Nothing.

I had to give up and try to find something else to use as spacers, but as so often happens in cases like this, I forgot about it and put the whole thing away.

Months went by, and though I was still pretty obsessed with Harold, I was shifting a bit, starting to move on. I was in my walk-in closet at the far end of the bedroom, as far from my jewellery case as possible. I felt something on the bottom of my foot.

It was the gold bead!

Seemed weird. Yes, weird, but. . .OK, somehow it got transported over there, on my foot? But wouldn't I feel it?

I went to put the bead back with all the other necklace material.

Wait a minute.

There was only one gold bead.

Even including the newly-found bead, I still had only two. I felt this phantom laughter, this twitting of my seriousness, this slightly nasty magician's satisfaction (for I have a theory that magicians are a little nasty, which is why I don't enjoy watching them perform) that seemed to say Harold was toying with me.

Fine then! I did it again! I put the bead back! I forgot about it! It was over, as far as I was concerned, and I could forget about the whole thing.

Months went by. The carpet was vacuumed several more times, and I obsessively checked in all the globs of filthy fluff for the lost bead. Nothing.

Then one day, getting dressed, just minding my own business, I saw something in the middle of the room, on the other side of the bed from my jewel case.

It shone a little. Jesus, no, it couldn't be!

I thought to myself: if I have only one bead in that case I will throw this sucker out the window, even get rid of the whole necklace. I opened the case and sighed to find there were two. My set of three was now restored.

Months went by. . . no, weeks I guess, when I was changing the lightbulb on a lamp in the other corner of the bedroom (I don't need to tell you how far away from the case). Then I felt something small and cold and hard under my foot.

For some obscure reason Harold wanted me to have four. A good trick on me. Things can't materialize out of nowhere, can they? But what about the loaves and fishes? Were they merely prestidigitation, or something infinitely more mysterious and profound?

I have a relationship with the unknown. I do not understand it and don't even want to go there, most of the time. Like a mirage, it can disappear if you pursue it. You see it in your peripheral vision, but when you turn your head. . .

When you turn your head, those three gold beads might just dematerialize, un-be, as they surely once were. As we surely all were, before we "were". And wherever that strange place is, there is no stopping us: we are all heading back there. Who knows when.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Ted. . . Fred. . . Fraud

It amazes me how quickly spare change can morph into wooden nickels.

Case in point. About a month ago, a homeless guy named Ted Williams (probably not his real name) "went viral" on YouTube for standing on a streetcorner in camouflage holding a piece of cardboard. On the video, this scruffy wraith spoke with a rich booming announcer's voice, and soon everyone in the nation was throwing job offers at him: advertising voiceovers, sportscasting, Disney characters (well, maybe). They did this to show the world how swell THEY were, not how swell they thought Ted was.

Everything moved so quickly, in a kind of blur. The story devolved from day to day: Ted not showing up for appointments. Ted acting strangely, speaking incoherently. Ted being taken in by police for an "altercation" with his daughter. Ted being lambasted on Dr. Phil for blowing all the opportunities life was throwing at him.

Just give the guy a job, and it'll all work out, won't it? His addiction, his criminal past, his nine alienated children by many different mothers, his current crack-whore girl friend, all these problems will melt away and he'll show up for work in the morning smiling, shaven and wearing a suit.

Right now his handlers are claiming we shouldn't worry that he bailed on expensive, paid-for rehab to hustle on the streets of Columbus again. He's receiving "outpatient" therapy, no doubt at a local watering hole.

It's tempting to blame Ted for all this. OK, I DO blame Ted for all this! But the bozos who thought they could immediately change entrenched, life-threatening behavior and a criminal past by throwing money at it were beyond naive. Where have they been hiding all these years?

So now I can't help but bring another Ted into the mishmosh, Ted Haggard, the not-gay pastor, who's now saying he's not bisexual but would be if he were 21 years old.

I don't get it. I don't get that he is now admitting he paid a gay hooker to masturbate him while high on crystal meth (not to mention his solitary activities while watching gay porn), but still hedges on admitting he's gay. Or even bisexual.

I don't know of any straight men who do this, or who even want to do this. I think he's dancing around a subject which obviously makes him profoundly uncomfortable. I think he's trying to save his face and his ass at the same time.

I think he's a fraud.

His new little barn church makes me wonder, too. I watched that TLC program in which he threw the doors of his crude sanctuary open to the wretched sinners of the earth. The darker the sin, the more he wanted you. This church was for really ba-a-a-a-a-ad people, sort of like Pastor Ted (who still isn't gay. Or bisexual. Though he would be if he was 21.)

Then I found a curious newspaper article from two years ago, saying Pastor Haggard had just opened up a new church in his barn. So he did this twice?

Or once more for the cameras?

These two Teds have certain things in common. They're both grandstanders who have learned how to fake sincerity. Both have traded on their wretchedness and on the public's fascination with the fallen.

Can they be redeemed? Well, what the hell does that mean? The man who once led a multimillion-dollar religious empire is now diving for spare change. The guy who chose the name of a famous ballplayer for his nom du guerre has slipped back into the poisonous stream of hustling for dope and dodging for dimes.

We love stories about how the mighty have fallen and been rescued by the grace of God and a wad of cash. But what do we do when these paragons of redemption fall on their asses again?