If you were watching Two-and-a-Half Men last night, you saw plenty of references to www.CharlieHarperSucks.com.
Wisely, the producers made it a real site.
(Added later: I forgot to post this after composing this. It’s now weeks old, of course!)
Fiction and fraud
NBC is getting ready to launch Medium, a new psychic detective drama. Fine. Nothing wrong with a bit of SF/Fantasy on TV.
Except there is something wrong here, something very wrong. You see, NBC is promoting this as being based on the life of a real person.
Now in real life, psychic detectives aren’t psychic. No, what they are is con men (or as in this case, con women) of the worst sort. They prey on those who are already in a crisis, drain them of money, divert investigations, and provide no real help. They’re best known for vague descriptions that would apply to just about any situation, allowing them to claim a “hit” after the situation has been solved. And then they add that to a list of invented and misrepresented cases.
If NBC surprises us and does a series about a fraudster, that would be a pleasant but quite unlikely surprise. Instead, we can expect them to be paying a fraudster for the right to put that fraud forth as reality, in a way that will encourage others to fall for the same sort of hideous frad.
What can we expect next from NBC? A series about why it’s good to donate to terrorist charities?
