Lost at Sea - or The Further Adventures of Mr. T-Rexposition

Last week, I introduced you to Mr. T-Rexposition.

Hey.

In hindsight, I feel that I did not do him justice. Like all freelancers these days, Mr. Rexpostion has had to come up with new and interesting ways to earn a living using his prodigious 'pointing out coincidences' and 'introducing plot points' skills. And despite this, there I was focusing on the least innovative of Mr. Rexposition's projects. 

She totally ignored my interpretive dance.

However, rather than getting mad, Mr. Rexposition decided to get even. And thus, whilst I was tinkering about with the next part of my book report, he appeared in a puff of smoke, told me to check Twitter, then disappeared. (Legal notice: Creative licence has been used liberally throughout this anecdote).

Eh, near enough.

The tweet in question was this:

Drives me nuts how @sylvia_browne has gone totally silent. I promise if I'm ever publicly shamed I'll be tweeting every five seconds.
— jonronson (@jonronson) May 8, 2013

How and why this was such a coincidence will become clear. But for now, please accept the second part of my April/May book report. 

Part 2: Lost at Sea by Jon Ronson

I wonder how many times Jon Ronson has been compared to Louis Theroux – or vice versa. I wonder if it irritates him (or, indeed, him).

   

                            'My hair's floppier!'                      'No, MINE is. Also,You smell'

Fortunately for us, however, the fact that this comparison seems to be made so often shows that there are at least two investigative journalists at large who tackle their subjects with fair-mindedness, humour and genuine curiosity. It makes a welcome change from the Ross Kemp ‘gang-culture porn’ school of documentary making and an even more welcome break from Piers Morgan’s “Everything must have been so HARD for you… cry pretty for camera three, please” technique of interviewing z-listers.

Incidentally, the best rap diss I've ever heard was '...You're rap's Piers Morgan'

Lost at Sea is a compilation of articles written by Ronson covering a whole host of social issues, trends and interesting people. For someone so seemingly gentle, I cannot imagine how intimidating it must be for him to arrange interviews with some of his subjects. From the self-styled taxonomist whose penchant for categorising people has led him to develop software designed to target the most vulnerable in society and bombard them with payday loan and credit card junk mail, to Jonathan King, the ex-pop impresario accused of molesting young boys at the height of his fame. And yet he approaches each subject with a broad mind, or, at least, an openness about his prejudices which argues true self-knowledge.

Not all of the topics broached are as serious (for example, the chapter examining the extraordinarily bizarro world of competitive eating), but most have an edge to them.

My money's on the one on the left. That kid's got heart.

 Ronson tackles each head on, injecting enough of his own participation and personality into each for us to be well aware of his own conclusions without forcing us to take the same view. Only a couple of times does his anger seem to take control of his journalistic impartiality. In the first instance, a small Christian sect (cult?) has begun donating kidneys en-masse. Ronson arrives to investigate this apparently incredibly charitable tendency before realising that he is being used by a senior figure in a truly stomach-churning way. I won’t reveal the denouement here, but safe to say it leaves an extremely sour taste in the mouth.

In the second instance, we are introduced to Sylvia Browne, TV 'psychic' extraordinaire.

The worst bit is, she predicted that make-up

In a breathtakingly uncomfortable chapter, Ronson takes to sea in order to try and nail an interview with this doyenne of magnificent frauds. ('To sea? What?' I hear you ask. Why, for a psychic cruise, bien sur! Isn't that every traveller's dream?)

Sylvia Browne, it transpires, is a particularly malevolent strain of the psychic bacteria. Although she does dabble in the traditional art of making hysterically inaccurate predictions for the future...

...Browne's particular specialty is holding nationally publicised consultations with the parents of missing children. 

It's people like this that really test the concept of the fundamental decency of human nature. What really boggles the mind is how often she has been proven wrong in the past. Now, if I were to go against every single inclination  in my body and decide to consult a psychic, I'm fairly sure I'd want to find one with a good track record of accurate readings. Wouldn't you?  But then, we live in a world where Tony Blair has built up a secondary career as a peace envoy to the Middle East.

Any. Single. One. of these people would have been better qualified. And that includes the clock.

So perhaps it's no surprise that despite repeated proof that Browne has the psychic capabilities of a pile of gall-stones, her career flourished.

All of these things are more psychic than Sylvia Browne

Until recently. As Ronson's Tweet posted above suggests, Browne went a bridge too far in her assessment that Amanda Berry, one of the recently rescued abductees from Cleveland, was dead and 'in water'. An assessment given on national TV - to the girl's mother.

Suddenly, the American media is full of scepticism. (In one clip, ABC charmingly admits 'You can't always believe those psychics'... No. No you can't, can you. What is the world coming to?) Browne has had to take down her Twitter feed and her career looks to be as good as dead.

What confuses me is why it is this particular case that has caused such spectacular damage to her reputation. Amanda Berry is not the first child to turn up alive after Browne has pronounced otherwise, and the opposite has also, sadly, happened on many occasions. But for whatever reason, this particular vulture on the carcass of grief has finally been exposed. Ronson and anyone who has read the article in question must be heaving a sigh of relief. 

Lost at Sea is, like all of Ronson’s books so far, an occasionally disturbing and uncomfortable read. It does, however, grant you incredible access into worlds hidden away from the spotlight, and to characters in major news stories who’s points of view have been ignored by the mainstream media. 

Above all, however, the draw to Ronson's work is his sense of the ridiculous. Even in a chapter as horrifying and depressing as that devoted to Sylvia Browne, one of the passages that stayed with me is the description of Browne in the cruise ship gift-shop, spotting some of her fans and wheeling away at high speed, suddenly publicity-shy. 

Sylviaaaaa!!!!!!

As a psychic, she should have seen it coming.

(The full Ronson article can be read here: HERE!)