#780: Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington is – as most of you know – the socialite founder of Huffington Post. Despite other potential virtues, the Huffington Post’s attitude to science, especially in their health and well-being sections, is more than questionable; indeed, Huffpo is an abysmally shameless pusher of pseudoscience and woo, including anti-vaccinationism, Deepak Chopra-style altmed garbage; and self-help articles most of all reminiscent of The Secret. Luminaries who have written for the site include self help guru and pseudo-“Native American” spirituality rip-off peddler James Arthur Ray (to be covered); John Morton, current spiritual director of the new-age group John-Roger's Movement for Inner Spiritual Awareness; altmed loon Andrew Weil; as well as homeopath and internet troll Dana Ullman (see this, for instance). Reasonable people have thus repeatedly called for a boycott, and there is a good discussion of Huffpo’s preference for bogus claims about medicine over reality here - Huffington herself says that “[w]hen it comes to health and wellness issues, our goal is to provide a diverse forum for a reasoned discussion of issues of interest and importance to our readers.” Or, in other words, the Huffpo will not try to distinguish the correct from the wrong or even crazy, instead trying to promote a false balance.

The thing, of course, is that – like Oprah – Huffington herself is a big fan of such matters. She is, for instance, a longtime follower of John-Roger's MISA, and the dreadful piece “A Personal Case for Homeopathy” by Judith Acosta was published not only in Huffpo but on Huffington’s own blog. When Huffpo’s new science section was announced she presented it in a manner that is, well, rather revealing with regard to how she views science: “Rather than taking up arms in those misguided, outdated battles [between science and religion], HuffPost Science will work in the tradition of inquisitive minds that can accommodate both logic and mystery,” Or in other words, they will continue to push new-age woo and disregard that boring notion of trying to align their claims with reality. Which of course is exactly what they did.

Even quackwatch has been forced to list Huffington as a promoter of questionable methods and/or advice.

Diagnosis: A severe threat to life and well-being, Huffington’s views may not be among the most extreme, but like Oprah she has enormous influence, which she unfortunately misuses in the worst possible way. Extremely dangerous. Boycott Huffpo as much as you’d boycott the WND.

#779: David Hudson

David Hudson is an Arizona cotton farmer who allegedly discovered ORMUS (Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Elements) in 1975, a group of substances exhibiting many miraculous properties, such as healing powers and superconductivity at room temperature. It can allegedly cure all forms of disease, correct errors in the DNA, emit gamma radiation, partially levitate in the Earth's magnetic field, read a person’s mind, have a “weigh-ability” different from mass (a property that is somewhat underdescribed), be fused into a transparent glass, and make severed cat tails grow back. Hudson has no scientific background, and although his presentations are riddled with scientific jargon, he displays no sign of actually understanding any of it, nor – come to mind – the ordinary language words inserted between the jargon.

Of course, the scientific community does not recognize the existence of ORMUS, but this is because they are close-minded. Nevertheless, his claims are popular in certain circles. One of the staunchest fans of ORMUS, Barry Carter, has attempted to explain how ORMUS is e.g. related to dead people’s souls and/or biblical manna. David Icke is a fan as well, and on Mike Adams’s site NaturalNews Mike Donkers has claimed that ORMUS is “Spiritual and Medicinal Gold With Incredible Healing Potential” (no, I won’t link to NaturalNews). It would have helped if anything corresponding to the properties ascribed to ORMUS actually existed, of course, but as it stands ORMUS is just about as effective and well-justified as homeopathy.

Diagnosis: The ORMUS people belong to the more extreme fringes of the lunacy movement and it is hard to view them as a serious threat to anything but themselves. They do serve as an illustration of how far into idiot land it is possible to fall without being committed to an institution, however. 

#778: Brannon Howse

Brannon Howse is the leader of the ultrafundamentalist Worldview Weekend and a Christian conspiracy theorist whose version of the classic New World Order conspiracy involves pretty much everyone except Howse and a few ravingly mad premillenialist fanatics. It used to be the Jews of course, but at present the conspiracy involves UN, all liberals, gays, scientist, Catholics and everyone else you care to name, including the New Apostolic Reformation and its allies (also here). In short, it’s the conspiracy of reality and sanity (+ the New Apostolic Reformation, which is not associated) pitted against Howse and a select few Taliban illiterates, and they are tirelessly out to get him, all the time and everywhere. To Howse the motivation of his enemies, reality and civilization, is to glorify Satan. His rhetorical style (and logic) has been described as “unique”. Virtually everyone Howse disagrees with is designated as “a Keynesian, a Fabian socialist, a communist, a Marxist, a radical, a Fascist.” Of course, Howse does not back up the assertions by evidence, nor does he really notice that the categories to which he assigns his opponents are often mutually exclusive. In fact, even the American Family Association has severed its ties to Howse and forbidden their talkshow hosts Todd Friel and John Loeffler, who used to be associated with him, from maintaining their ties to him.

Among his recurrent tenets is the idea that contemplative prayer is occultic and that all contemplative prayers are pagan (and the people engaged in it obviously Satanists) and have something to do with the New World Order; that Rick Warren is a marxist change agent; that transhumanism will eventually lead to the recreation of the Nephilim through demons posing as aliens; that Russia is still communist (the apparent fall of the Soviet union is just a ploy), that the FEDs are secretly instating communism in the US, and that the census list is federal ploy to identify and tag all Christians for persecution. To select just a single quote to illustrate where Howse is coming from: “Liberals who hate Christians love pedophiles and refuse to pass an amendment on to H.R. 1913 that excludes pedophiles from special protection. Does this not tell you all you need to know about their real goal for America and Christians?” Howse is, of course, a vehement denier of evolution and global warming, and a firm opponent of science and education, but I suppose that goes without saying.

At least he does not think, like e.g. David Barton, that the Constitution is based on the Bible. His reasons are, well, you ought to see for yourself. Howse has elsewhere asserted that the Constitution is hostile to the Gospel, that the Founding Fathers were Satanists and freemasons, and thus that the works of Barton and the terminably stupid Kirk Cameron are blasphemous.

He also (in line with Glenn Beck) favors the gold standard over floating currency because it is the “Biblical” form of currency. It is worth mentioning, however, that Howse doesn’t fancy Beck, since the latter is involved in a conspiracy to turn Christians into Mormons. Indeed, Howse has dismissed Beck as a “new age Anti-Christ”, a claim dutifully picked up by WND’s Joe Kovacs, and claimed that Mormonism is “America’s Islam”. So there.

Diagnosis: Frenzied Taliban supporter who consistently rejects anything having to do with reality, sanity, or decency. Although his influence is limited, and he has a tendency to get into conflict with other extremist wingnuts, he should not be overlooked as a detrimental influence on civilization.

#777: Robert Howard

Robert Howard is one of the leading experts on the Illuminati and freemasons in the US, or – as critics may put it as a means to blunt the impact of his worrisome nose-poking – a batshit insane conspiracy theorist. His work is featured for instance on the blog network Wake Up From Your Slumber (the main contributor to which seems to be one Tom Sullivan), and on whale.to, which should really tell you everything you need to know. In the article “13 and 33, the Freemason’s Signature” he elegantly combines conspiracy theory with numerology and free use of capslock to derive many, uh, novel results, for instance that most of the founding fathers and presidents of the US were freemasons, and that he Cuban missile crisis lasted 13 days, which suggests a ploy or fake crisis (indeed, he is shocked that the movie on the matter is called “13 days”, a title which to Howard suggests more freemason conspiracy rather than, you know, the fact that the crisis lasted for 13 days). Indeed, here you have everything, from the death of princess Diana to the moonlandings; all based on the numbers 13 and 33. It really is a must-read (especially the section where Howard employs rather feeble numerology to show the connection between the masons and everything from AOL and FEMA to Dairy Queen) and Mazda (Howard’s trucks have 13 gallon fuel tanks, which could hardly be a coincidence, now, could it?)

Diagnosis: I guess the world is richer for the existence of people like Howard. His influence is presumably negligible.

#776: Jean Houston

Jean Houston is a new-age self-help guru and former president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, who runs the “Mystery School”. The purpose of the Mystery School, a typical brand of New Thought, is, according to Houston, “to engender the passion for the ‘possible’ in our human and global development while discovering ways of transcending and transforming the local self so that extraordinary life can arise!” Pure nonsense, in other words. “Your energies, your powers, your stamina, your moral force seem limited only because you and your habituations and the habituations and expectations of your culture set limits. Therefore, what Mystery School tries to do here, is to go beyond the limits and create a consensual reality in which the horizon of the limits is greatly expandable and More becomes possible,” says Houston, and charges you $140 to learn it. “It is my 20th Century version of an ancient and honorable tradition, the study of the world’s spiritual mysteries,” which could in fact be correct, but doesn’t exactly confer credibility even if it were – she claims that her school is part of a tradition that has probably existed ever “since humans have been humans,” a claim that implies that the mystery schools have made very little progress. As Robert Carroll points out, “[t]here is ample evidence she is correct about that.” She doesn’t emphasize that implication, however.

As she puts it “The traditional question of all Mystery Schools is - How do you place the local self, your local historical self, in the service of the Self? How do you place it in the psyche where the Immanent God resides? How do you respond to the Lure of Becoming and keep up sufficient energy, passion, momentum, delight, engagement, fascination, that you agree to be constantly lured? Unfortunately the stuff of everyday life often inhibits the Lure.”

Houston has been caught claiming to be in possession of several doctorates, though the one she has is a PhD in Philosophy of Religion from Union College. Indeed, her biography makes several strikingly big claims about her life story (that she was friends with Einstein and Teilhard de Chardin, for instance), which it might be worth to consider in light of her claims about her doctorate, as well as in light of the observation that according to Houston’s New Age drivel “deep” truth is something you create, not something which is discovered empirically. That is, she is permitted to make up whatever she wants and claim that it’s true.

Houston is a prolific author of New Age junk (much of it co-authored with one Robert Masters), and also the inventor of what she calls “sacred psychology”, which adorably enough seems to have mistaken Kierkegaard for Rhonda Byrne.

Diagnosis: Total fluffbot. Indeed, Houston is one of the brightest and clearest examples of promoters of snowflake rubbish you will ever encounter. She seems to have some influence, but it also appears to be rather local and limited.