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Does the "Amazing" Kreskin have Memory Problems?

Gord_in_Toronto

Penultimate Amazing
Gord_in_Toronto
Joined
Jul 22, 2006
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In Saturday's Toronto Star there is a fawning, credulous interview with the "mentalist" the "Amazing" Kreskin.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/Theatre/article/523475

Among the many, err, amazing claims made is that:
But that was fairly trivial compared with an incident a few years before. On Jan. 1, 2001, Kreskin appeared on a CNN program to discuss his latest book and make some predictions for the year, all in a lighthearted mode.


"Suddenly, I saw something," he says, his voice shaking. "I interrupted the host and I said, `While the public is not aware of this, we are at war with terrorists and this September, there will be a major disaster involving four airlines."


And when 9/11 came around that year, very few of us were happy that Kreskin had seen the future.
Click to expand...
The Star "reporter" neglected to do is actually read the transcript of the show which is available on-line at:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0101/01/tod.11.html
to see what Kreskin actually said:

KRESKIN: You know, Joie, I'm not a negative person, by the way, and I don't want anyone to misunderstand this, but I do believe by September or October there will be two major plane crashes. I don't predict disasters in which people are hurt, but it will be the disaster of two companies going out of business. And that I'm almost willing to bet.
CHEN: Wait, are those two things related? The plane crashes and the...
KRESKIN: The plane crashes -- there will not be planes crashing. The crashes will be the companies collapsing, going out of business.
CHEN: Oh, I see. OK.
KRESKIN: No crashes. No crashes at all.
CHEN: No crashes. Big airlines, ones we know about?
KRESKIN: Huh?
CHEN: Big airlines, those who have big names?
KRESKIN: We'd better not say. I've got to fly one tomorrow. Gee, don't even look it up. Don't look it up, Joie.
Click to expand...
My bolding.

With a "warning" like that I bet a whole bunch of people immediately closed their offices in the WTC and left New York! :rolleyes:

He also offered to bet the first person to take him up $10,000 that the Yankees would win the World Series.

Kreskin is not as bad as the Sylvia Browns and John Edwards of the World as, as far as I know, he does not do individual "readings".

However, by "mis-remembering" his predictions, he supports and promotes the psychic woo.

The Toronto Star has low journalistic standards.

:mad:
 
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Gord_in_Toronto said:
The Toronto Star has low journalistic standards.
Click to expand...
Yes, it does seems to have slipped some over the years. I suggest you send them a crisply-worded letter to the editor repeating the points you made in the OP. Does the Star still have an ombudsman?
 
I dont know a great deal of Kreskin's integrity regarding claims of psychic powers,but all I see him doing is giving copy/advertising for his book.
Had he made a claim of psychic powers initially I would be irked.

From link:
"Let's get one thing straight from the start," he says on the phone from his New Jersey home, "I am not a mystic, a clairvoyant or a psychic. I am a thought-reader, pure and simple.
Click to expand...

Maybe the journalist edited it to appear woo.
 
Corsair 115 said:
Yes, it does seems to have slipped some over the years. I suggest you send them a crisply-worded letter to the editor repeating the points you made in the OP. Does the Star still have an ombudsman?
Click to expand...

Amusingly enough I have done that a few times in the past about similar psychicpuffpieces in the Star. In one I had an email go round with the reporter. The reasoning from the Star was that it was in the Entertainment Section and thus was not real news. My response was "so what?" do your standards do not apply to everything you publish?

In the another I was promised a follow up and am still waiting a couple of years later.

I may try again with this. But I don't think I'll be satisfied by the answer. :(
 
Azrael 5 said:
I dont know a great deal of Kreskin's integrity regarding claims of psychic powers,but all I see him doing is giving copy/advertising for his book.
Had he made a claim of psychic powers initially I would be irked.

From link:


Maybe the journalist edited it to appear woo.
Click to expand...

Kreskin does a lot of waffling on what he is and does. He usually claims to be a mentalist.

In this case he most definitely did not predict airplanes crashing into the WTC. His "major disaster involving four airlines" was that the would fail in a business sense.

KRESKIN: The plane crashes -- there will not be planes crashing. The crashes will be the companies collapsing, going out of business.
Click to expand...
:shocked::shocked::shocked::shocked::shocked: :shocked::shocked::shocked::shocked:
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
Kreskin does a lot of waffling on what he is and does. He usually claims to be a mentalist.

In this case he most definitely did not predict airplanes crashing into the WTC. His "major disaster involving four airlines" was that the would fail in a business sense.

:shocked::shocked::shocked::shocked::shocked: :shocked::shocked::shocked::shocked:
Click to expand...

He always claims to be a mentalist as far as Im aware,it says he isn't psychic.
The OP is citing a journalist's quote,even if true as written its Kreskin seizing some free publicity for his book.Embellishment.
 
Azrael 5 said:
He always claims to be a mentalist as far as Im aware,it says he isn't psychic.
The OP is citing a journalist's quote,even if true as written its Kreskin seizing some free publicity for his book.Embellishment.
Click to expand...

I don't think much of the Star reporter's reporting but it seems an awful stretch to believe he misquoted Kreskin:
"Suddenly, I saw something," he says, his voice shaking. "I interrupted the host and I said, `While the public is not aware of this, we are at war with terrorists and this September, there will be a major disaster involving four airlines."
Click to expand...

I can seize some free publicity for my yet to be published book that I predicted that Dianna (the Princess of Whales) would be killed in a car crash. However, I will not, because in this Universe it is called lying.

Kreskin vacillates about what he does. I've caught him in one lie where he claimed to have predicted the future. Why would I think he has any more psychic ability than Sylvia Brown?

My objection to the article and to Kreskin is that this gives support to the belief that there is such a thing as psychic ability. And this supports the kooks of the world. YMMV.

I just checked Kreskin's website. I see that all his predictions he lists are the old "locked box" (more often "sealed envelop") stage magician trick. He calls them "predictions" not "tricks". They are tricks.
http://www.amazingkreskin.com/?cat=5
 
Kreskin has always tried to walk the fence. When confronted by magicians and mentalists, he makes no claims of psychic powers. But for most lay-people, he tries very hard to give the impression he is not a magician and will waffle if asked directly.
 
Warning: Necro Thread!

I guess this is an appropriate place for this:

Mentalist George ‘The Amazing Kreskin’ Kresge dead at age 89

Dec. 11 (UPI) -- George Kresge, who performed as "The Amazing Kreskin,"has died at age 89 after performing on stage and television for six decades and making numerous appearances on popular talk shows.

"It is with heavy hearts that we announce the passing of The Amazing Kreskin," his family posted on X on Tuesday.

"Performing for all of you brought immense joy to his life," his family continued, "and it was something he deeply cherished."

Kresge's manager, Ryan Galway, said he died Tuesday at his home in Caldwell, N.J., The Hollywood Reporter reported.
Click to expand...
 
Gord_in_Toronto said:
No need to apologize. It was relevant and did not deserve a new thread. I was just trying to be amusing.

:w2:
Click to expand...
My first reply was to your OP commenting on how Kreskin made his "prediction" by vaguely waving his hands in the direction of a very likely event, and then dialled in the accuracy post hoc.

Hence the apologies.
 
Wasn't James Randi also "The Amazing" Randi? Who used that first? (Some of us who never bothered to ask for a unique title still have the "Penultimate Amazing" thing to this day.)
 
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