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JohnnyO
New member
It concerns me greatly that the FCC is cracking down on people who charge a great deal of money for what they can't deliver. No, I'm not referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Travolta or Sylvester Stallone, but that would-be Caribbean sorceress, Miss Cleo. According to the news, the federal government has joined with state attorney generals in trying to shut down a woman who inveigles the public by purporting to know their future. After one charming glass of wine with her accountant, however, it became clear to me that Miss Cleo should be more renowned for making fortunes rather than telling them.
Personally I've never had cause to use any supposed clairvoyant's services. I don't speak to the dead. They are naively unaware of this rather specific slight, as I don't tend to speak to most of the living either. Nevertheless, are these harmless tête-à-têtes so terrible? To be honest, I find the fact that people credulous enough to spend $5-a-minute to hear vague prognostications from a phone-bank of women (and Frackal) one paycheck away from making cold-calls for telemarketers somewhat comforting. If they weren't tied up on the telephone ignoring common sense by making small-talk with someone imbued with less supernatural powers than Darrin Stevens on Bewitched, they might be in the car behind mine ignoring the red light dangling before us.
Once Miss Cleo is sent back to behind the counter at KFC, will the FCC, in its stated desire to protect the American public from chicanery, turn its attention to other people on TV who hawk the future like it was theirs to sell for an exorbitant fee? I am, of course, talking about Pat Robertson. What of the televangelists who promise to cure everything from cantankerousness to cancer in exchange for a generous "love offering"?
Will the Attorney General of New York swoop down and padlock all the Catholic confessionals? After all, Miss Cleo is only promising the hair color of next Thursday's fling, not a rendezvous with God, eternal life and a charmingly appointed mansion of gold overlooking the Milky Way. Indeed, when it comes to having the ingenuity to package the future and market it to the public for a retail price, Christianity makes Miss Cleo look like quite the hapless amateur. Once tithes and other contributions to our rather prosperous enterprise are spread out over the course of a light afternoon of confessions or faith-healings, Christianity's minute-by-minute fees renders Miss Cleo a below-market bargain.
Nevertheless, while I have always considered Miss Cleo's syntax and mode of dress criminal, it worries me that she may be criminally liable for duping an audience verily begging to be deceived and fleeced. To blame Miss Cleo for someone else's desperation is tantamount to jailing the man driving the train that Anna Karenina found herself under.
Personally I've never had cause to use any supposed clairvoyant's services. I don't speak to the dead. They are naively unaware of this rather specific slight, as I don't tend to speak to most of the living either. Nevertheless, are these harmless tête-à-têtes so terrible? To be honest, I find the fact that people credulous enough to spend $5-a-minute to hear vague prognostications from a phone-bank of women (and Frackal) one paycheck away from making cold-calls for telemarketers somewhat comforting. If they weren't tied up on the telephone ignoring common sense by making small-talk with someone imbued with less supernatural powers than Darrin Stevens on Bewitched, they might be in the car behind mine ignoring the red light dangling before us.
Once Miss Cleo is sent back to behind the counter at KFC, will the FCC, in its stated desire to protect the American public from chicanery, turn its attention to other people on TV who hawk the future like it was theirs to sell for an exorbitant fee? I am, of course, talking about Pat Robertson. What of the televangelists who promise to cure everything from cantankerousness to cancer in exchange for a generous "love offering"?
Will the Attorney General of New York swoop down and padlock all the Catholic confessionals? After all, Miss Cleo is only promising the hair color of next Thursday's fling, not a rendezvous with God, eternal life and a charmingly appointed mansion of gold overlooking the Milky Way. Indeed, when it comes to having the ingenuity to package the future and market it to the public for a retail price, Christianity makes Miss Cleo look like quite the hapless amateur. Once tithes and other contributions to our rather prosperous enterprise are spread out over the course of a light afternoon of confessions or faith-healings, Christianity's minute-by-minute fees renders Miss Cleo a below-market bargain.
Nevertheless, while I have always considered Miss Cleo's syntax and mode of dress criminal, it worries me that she may be criminally liable for duping an audience verily begging to be deceived and fleeced. To blame Miss Cleo for someone else's desperation is tantamount to jailing the man driving the train that Anna Karenina found herself under.
These computer geeks at work have no artistic or literary sense beyond Star Trek.
