Last night we went and saw
The Theresa Caputo Experience
Mentioning it here for a reason. What can a medium possibly have to offer someone, either a nationally recognized one or a home grown spirit guide ? Entertainment, distraction, a chance to vent emotion. Under the right circumstances its an act of empathy and compassion that seems harmless. When you are grieving this is someone who will most often tell you little white lies, that everything's OK and most often the people hearing that are already more than half convinced or they wouldn't be talking to a medium in the first place.
And then you have something like this. This woman is
good - she really is an entertainer that knows how to work an audience and I found myself having fun. Quite the spectacle. To be absolutely clear:
do I for on single instant think there was any Afterlife communication going on? Hell no, this was pure showmanship. But, thing is, you'd have to believe at least some of those she interacted with were not plants and the apparently genuine emotion I witnessed made me wonder if I had wandered into some sort of religious revival, not the
Long Island Medium. This wasn't belief, this was
Faith I was witnessing. In other forms we see the same sort of dogged devotion in the ufological circles.
I see all this as harmless fun, at my most snarkiest I'd call it a tax on stupidity. Call me stupid I had fun.
Why did I go? Well, I'm usually game for an experience. It's one thing to sit on the sidelines and call a show like that silly, it's another to be immersed in a literal ocean of menopausal women who lap this stuff up. I think what gets lost on TV is the feeling, the palpable breath-holding of the entire audience. I have never watched a single episode of her show but know what it is. I'm also familiar with that Long Island schtick and to be honest, my wife is a Queens girl and has an accent about as thick. Water, butter, coffee - three words guaranteed to crack up my Midwest family.
And there's the root of it, silly or not my wife likes the show and you don't have to whack me in the head with a tire tool - if my wife likes that then so do I, whatever it may be.