Whirled snippets to take your mind off of the Kevin Trudeau trial (for a while)

Hey, kiddos, remember when this blog was about something besides serial scammer Kevin Trudeau's court cases? Remember when it lived up to its description of being a Whirling, swirling ocean of snark chum, devoted to a wide range of New-Wage/selfish-help/McSpirituality topics and hustledorks? I've said this before, but fear I may have alienated some of my loyal followers when I started obsessing so much over Katie. I need to remedy that, at least in some small way, in order to let my original fan base know I've not forgotten them.

Don't worry. I'm still going to keep you updated on the court doings. Just like I did here.

And here.

I'll have more in the next day or so about the latest court doings, links to the news media stories, and prolly some gratuitous snarks about some of Katie's supporters (though I would be surprised if he didn't have people rooting for him in court, and it actually gives me some satisfaction to acknowledge that to this day he has a far larger and more loyal fan base than some of his loathsome ex-b.f.f.s who are trying desperately to fill his shoes). 

But for now... oh, my, there are so many other topics tugging at my sleeve, just begging for attention, that I cannot ignore them any more. So take a brief break from the court watching (but be sure to check in on GIN Network Truth if you're on Facebook), and have a few snippets.

We don't need another Hero...
Oh, Good Goddess. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the book store, along comes Secret creator Rhonda Byrne with yet another insipid tome. Following 2010's The Power and last year's The Magic, the new book, due out November 19, is called, simply, Hero.

I can't wait to see the names of the twelve living "heroes" Rhonda picked to showcase this time. She did such a stellar job of hero-picking for The Secret. It really doesn't matter what she writes, though. Everything she publishes becomes a bestseller. That is one of the things that makes me worry for the future of the human race.

Hype'oponopono
Speaking of new books... it's been a while since I've visited New-Wage/McSpirituality guru and star of The Secret Joe Vitale, long a favorite snarget on this Whirled. (Actually he's a buddy of Kevin Trudeau too, or was -- as noted here and here and here -- though he has pretty much stayed mum about Kevin's more recent troubles.) Why, a little over six years ago I even sponsored a Hawaiian Week (which turned out to be considerably longer than a week) on this blog. This was in honor of the release of Joe's book, Zero Limits, a tribute to a modernized "proprietary" form of a native Hawaiian conflict resolution practice called Ho'oponopono. Responding to a request from a misguided publicist who'd been hired by Joe's publisher, I read and wrote an actual review of Zero Limits on my blog, in a two-part post published on July 9 and July 10, 2007.

About a year and a half before Zero Limits hit the market, Joe started getting people all excited about Ho'oponopono -- and ultimately about Zero Limits -- by spreading an apocryphal tale of Ho'oponopono-based miracle cures in a Hawaiian hospital for the criminally insane. Here's that story. It was copied and pasted and published and republished and peated and repeated countless times by countless starry-eyed believers, all over the Interwebs. Few people seemed to question whether the story was real or not.

And here is the more credible Whirled version. (Several people wrote to me asking if my story was real. It is as real as you want it to be.)

Now Joe has thrown together a new book to further exploit Ho'oponopono. (Or perhaps Joe'oponopono would be a better word.) The new work is called, At Zero: The Final Secrets to "Zero Limits" -- The Quest for Miracles Through Ho'oponopono (Wiley, October 2013).

So far Joe's new book has one review on Amazon. I would say that it is not a favorable one.

Ho'oponopono is a great tool for forgiveness. This book gets two stars because of the power of ho'oponopono. However, the book is at least 50% padding (unedited interviews, letters, etc), 30% marketing for other programs, and 20% stories of how other people have horribly wronged the author and how he used ho'oponopono to get over it.

It was disappointing to read the author basically recant the unbelievable story of Dr. Ihaleakela Hew Len's miraculous healing at the Hawaiian hospital for the criminally insane. Vitale uses the opportunity to take shots at ABC news and mass media being big downers. But it seems that the entire internet sensation of how and why ho'oponopono gained notoriety was based on admitted (in this book) half-truths.

As with most of Vitale's works, you'll have to endure endless marketing pitches for Miracles Coaching (with the registered trademark EVERYWHERE), awakening courses, and stories about meeting celebrities... and how horribly wronged he has been by friends, attorneys, and anyone else who questioned the validity of ho'oponopono.

I personally believe in the power of the practice. Ho'oponopono is very powerful in letting go of what you believe to be true so that you can experience something else. However, I wish I had passed on this overpriced more-of-the-same from Joe Vitale.

Yep, that pretty much sounds like Joe's formula for cobbling together a book. It didn't used to be that way, back in the day when I knew him, but his more recent efforts have pretty much complied with the formula that the reader described above. I'm amused but not particularly surprised that he would seem to disclaim the story about Dr. Hew Len curing those loonies. Oops, I mean those criminally insane people. And for a such a bastion of positivity, Joe does seem to spend an awful lot of time whining about how many people wronged him. Take it all with a huge amount of salt. Or better yet, just don't take it.

Rumors of my illness, jealousy, and abysmal taste in "men" have been greatly exaggerated

I guess it all does come back around to Katie after all, via his vile little ex-b.f.f., Mocktor Loony Coldwell. Although the Loonmeister has blocked me from seeing any of his rants on Facebook, others can see them and they take screen shots.

For those of you who are new here or just need a recap: A little over a year ago, apparently enraged because I had blogged a few months previously about him (here is the link to my first post about him, in case you haven't already read it), Loony began spreading blatant lies about me, mostly on Abe Husein's main Facebook page. I found his rants more amusing than outrageous, because they were such flagrant falsehoods. Other people were indignant on my behalf and reported him to Facebook. I was rather enjoying how he hung himself, though, and I have screen shots of everything.

Among other lunatic claims, he said his "research team" had learned that I was being paid by Big Pharma and/or the medical profession to discredit natural "healers" such as himself. Now, at least that would have been a somewhat logical lie -- although it is a lie nonetheless -- but, in an apparent attempt to make me seem even less credible, he also said I am a former prostitute who infected the guy who supposedly told him about me with "a bad STD." I've heard credible buzz about why he is so obsessed with prosties but he's definitely barking up the wrong tree with me. He said he had videos about me and would start publishing them soon (this was over a year ago). Later he came out and said I have AIDS. All of these are of course lies. And even his loyal fans (yes, he does have people who are blind or stupid enough to be fans) don't believe those lies.

He had been pretty quiet for a while, and then yesterday, on a thread on Abe's wall, Coldwell said I have cancer, which apparently developed because I am jealous of Loony and his peeps (see screen shot above). Of course as usual he doesn't come out and mention my name (the better to slither out of a potential lawsuit), but most of us snapped to his meaning because of the context. Everything in that rant is of course a lie, though perhaps wishful thinking on Loony's part. It's remarkable how a so-called "compassionate healer" who "really cares about people" can get such apparent glee from the prospect of anyone contracting the very disease he claims to be on a mission to cure.

In that same rant he claimed that I had asked Kevin Trudeau's former marketing guy Peter Wink for a date with him (Coldwell), and that because Loony rebuffed me, this is why I went on a "hate rampage" against him and Peter. Wow... more wishful thinking on Loony's part? Shudder, shudder.

My pal Bernie at GINtruth.com has already blogged about it, complete with screen shot. Heeere's Bernie!

As I 'splained in my comment to Bernie's post, and have mentioned here and on other forums as well, the truth about my correspondence with Peter, regarding Loony, is more mundane. These communications always centered around Peter’s attempts to get me to stop writing critical blog posts about Loony. Peter tried very earnestly, ultimately to no avail, to convince me that Coldwell is a very nice guy who really, really cares about people. At one point Peter wrote an email to me proposing that if I would stop writing blog posts about Coldwell and would take down the ones I had written, then Peter would approach Coldwell and ask him if he MIGHT stop spreading lies that I am an AIDS-infected former prostitute. I do not make deals with the devil, so… no deal.

Besides, even if I were in the dating market -- which I'm not, and haven't been for more years than the former Bernd Klein has even been in the USA -- I have always had a tendency to want to stick to my own species. I'm just funny that way.

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