Slog News & Arts

Line Out

Music & Nightlife

« Duh of the Day | "I call this move the Cricket.... »

Monday, April 28, 2008

The Secret is Money

posted by on April 28 at 15:25 PM

secretlemming.jpg

I have hated The Secret for a long time now. I think that the many people who’ve forwarded me this New York Times story thought that I’d be giddy at the prospect of the co-director of The Secret movie suing for his share of the profits. It’s understandable. After all, the people who popularized this whole Law of Attraction thing—think about an empty parking spot and, lo, an empty parking spot shall appear—being involved in a huge, ugly lawsuit isn’t very Law of Attraction-y.

But I’m too depressed by this little snippet of information to take much glee in the schadenfreude:

The suit claims that Mr. Heriot is the co-author of the screenplay and the book and is therefore entitled to up to half of what his lawyers estimate as $300 million in “Secret” revenue.

That number is so depressingly huge that I can’t feel happy about any of this.

RSS icon Comments

1

Thank you for hating The Secret. I love you.

A person close to me totally believes in the Secret. She believes that people get raped or murdered because they put energy into the universe calling those acts to them. She doesn't put that energy out there and she hasn't been raped or murdered so see, it works. Grrrrrrrrrrr

Posted by PopTart | April 28, 2008 3:43 PM
2

On the contrary, you should respect the creators of The Secret for figuring out a relatively harmless way to capitalize on people's amazing stupidity.

Posted by Original Andrew | April 28, 2008 3:53 PM
3

@2: It's not harmless, though. It's taking advantage of people's stupidity, and potentially making them even dumber. Did you read PopTart's post, above you? It's a totally harmful book.

Posted by Paul Constant | April 28, 2008 5:30 PM
4


Paul @ 3,


Hey it's not like that Secret woman (some Australian gal who srsly needs some Alberto VO5?) started a war or sold her customers worthless investments.


She simply told people that they could control the Universe with their thoughts, and then rented an eighteen-wheeler to haul off her tons and tons of cash.


The Stupids are gonna spend their money/waste their limited brain power on something, so better a book or a movie than something which causes immediate misery and destruction like donating money/voting Republican, right? (I'm not saying the two aren't linked).

Posted by Original Andrew | April 28, 2008 6:10 PM
5

As much as I hate that fucking book/franchise, i agree with Andrew. Smart stupid people have been capitalizing on not as smart stupid people since the dawn of, i don't know, consciousness? And some people believe in their own, completely harmful, doctrines and miss out on the whole "tons of cash" thing.

Posted by el | April 28, 2008 9:19 PM
6

I guess it's true, but I refuse to give these fuckers an inch. Do you know that, after this whole Secret thing, Oprah had to go on her show and tell her fans to go to their doctors? She got a letter from a fan saying that the fan had stopped going to her doctor and was fighting her cancer with positive thinking, like she read in The Secret. Now, I know the blogosphere is thick with people who say things like "Let the stupid people die," but I refuse to subscribe to that thinking. I think it's just sad that this woman believed Oprah and The Secret so much that she was willing to entrust her life to them, and now these fuckers are fighting over three hundred million dollars.

Posted by Paul Constant | April 28, 2008 10:07 PM
7

Eric Powell wrote a funny comic about that book. I think it's in The Goon #0: Satan's Sodomy Baby.

Posted by tabletop_joe | April 28, 2008 11:41 PM
8

Several months ago a friend of mine told me about the Secret and I ended up writing a whole blog entry about it on my webpage. I said to my friend that the poverty-stricken masses just must not be positive enough, otherwise they would have all the food they wanted. And why bother looking in the mailbox, since you can simply wish for your electric bill to be magically paid for? I'm not religious, but it seems a tad sacriligious to reduce whatever deity one believes in to one's personal Maytag repairman.

Posted by Johnny | April 29, 2008 6:40 AM
9

I'm loving your post and I share your hatred for The Secret. My fantasy has been for the author of The Secret to give a lecture to families in Baghdad. Ugh!

Posted by PussyDunkinHines | April 29, 2008 10:04 AM
10

Last week I went to a small business workshop sponsored by my city economic development office and the chanber of commerce. It featured a demographer from the state university, a business reference librarian from the city library and a representative from the SBA, BUT the first 40 minutes (!) featured a "motivational speaker" who spoke about The Secret, The Law of Attraction and Oprah. I tuned out, but the city plans to have her back in June for her own workshop.

So--do I raise a stink? If this was a private forum I'd just ignore it, but I just feel compelled to make sure these jokers know not everyone believes The Secret is appropriate in a publicly-sponsored forum. If I did object, should I just encourage another speaker to receive equal time? Or just leave this stupidity alone?

The Secret Antidote:
http://www.thomrutledge.com/secretantidote/default.asp?page=message

Posted by Cath | April 29, 2008 12:59 PM

Comments Closed

In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).