Long Island Medium: Racial Stereotypes = Accurate Psychic Readings

The Long Island Medium is a fraud. There's just no better way to put it. Like every psychic we've seen pop up over the years, she is a lying, manipulative, fame/money hungry douche. And recently I was treated to a fine display of her douchebagery at, of all places, work. There I am, sitting in the break room having lunch, when who should just happen to appear on the break room TV than Theresa Caputo herself, on the Meredith Vieira Show. And yes, I did nearly lose my appetite. 

She did her usual shtick; asking her vague questions to an audience of over a hundred, most of whom probably came to the show already believers. Parts were aggravating (especially seeing members of the audience driven to tears by Ms. Caputo's "readings"), and other parts were just boring. But I will admit, one segment in particular made me nearly fall out of my chair. Say what? Did she perform some mind-blowing reading that was beyond impressive? Had she truly demonstrated that she could in fact speak to the dead? Ah... no such luck. What happened was something that may have shown more proof that I'm psychic (I'm not btw. I promise :) )

As you might imagine, several of my co-workers were also on their lunch breaks too, and were subjected to Ms. Caputo just as I was. In between segments I explained to them how she did her readings; cold reading, using large crowds, vague descriptions, etc. They were all very receptive, and mostly agreed with me that she was indeed a fraud. At one point I mentioned a reading she had done on Katie Couric's show, which I myself first learned about from the Opie and Anthony Show. Here's how they described it:

I was at the gym... and I was watching Katie Couric's new show, cause it was on and I was like "eh, what the fuck, I'm gonna take a look at this." And this Long Island Medium was on. And then she starts working the crowd, and she actually said, and I'm kinda paraphrasing, "I'm feeling someone's loved one died recently." And then this black woman's like "Oh my God, me!". Like she just gives it up. And then of course in an audience like that someone's loved one died recently. And then this broad goes "I'm getting a vision or feeling that you might have sung in church." She says this to a black woman!

Eventually I found the clip they were talking about, and sure enough, Ms. Caputo got a "message" from "somewhere" that a black woman in the audience may have sung in church before. My reaction to this was pretty much the same as their's, and likewise my friends thought this sounded like a pretty, shall we say, sketchy reading as well.

But now the unbelievable. Not fives minutes after I told my friends this story did the program start up again, and Ms. Caputo went over to a sobbing black woman and asked her the following:

Do you sing, or do you listen to church music, or gospel music? Because all I keep hearing is "release my soul, awake my soul." And I keep hearing like "Allelujah" [sic]. That song "Allelujah" [sic].

I lost it. I simply lost it, and so did my friends. We couldn't believe this happened, like I said, less than five minutes[!] after I told my story. We all sat there utterly dumbstruck at this, me being in a mixed state of laughter and rage. So apparently Ms. Caputo decides to resort to this tactic on more than one occasion. Good to know. If this isn't cold reading taken to a new low, I don't know what is.

"It's not about who it is, getting the details of how they died,

their name, their birthday, their this, what they wore on their

left hand. It's not about that. It's about delivering the message

of healing." -Theresa Caputo to a sobbing audience memeber