9/2/2023 0 Comments Nytimes watching![]() By saying that Geller “won”, and putting in that “if”, the NYT is once again pandering to woo. His followers now more or less admit it, and magicians like Randi could do it regularly. ![]() My take: No, civility and fairness don’t demand the “if”-the possibility that he really was bending spoons with his brain. Geller’s claims to superpowers seem almost innocent. And now that fakery is routinely weaponized online, Mr. ![]() He is a reminder that people thrill at the sense that they are either watching a miracle or getting bamboozled. Small wonder that the anti-Geller brigade has laid down its arms and led a rapprochement with the working professionals of magic. Geller can’t actually bend metal with his brain - and civility and fairness demands this “if” - he is the author of a benign charade, which is a pretty good definition of a magic trick. That’s bad writing, and is in fact not true, since Geller never admitted he was doing trickery (see below). Geller’s bent spoons are, in a sense, the analog precursors of digital deep fakes - images, videos and sounds, reconfigured through software, so that anyone can be made to say or do anything. Geller is an entertainer, one who’d figured out that challenging our relationship to the truth, and daring us to doubt our eyes, can inspire a kind of wonder, if performed convincingly enough. Mr. My take: The victor? The VICTOR? The NYT then admits that Geller wasn’t really banding spoons or was psychic it was all trickery:Īnd the point is that Mr. Geller ultimately emerged the victor in this war, and proof of his triumph is now on display in the museum: a coffee-table book titled “Bend It Like Geller,” which was written by the Australian magician Ben Harris and published in May. Like well-matched heavyweights, they pummeled one another in the ’70s and ’80s in televised contests that elevated them all. Geller was long shadowed by a handful of professional magicians appalled that someone was fobbing off what they said were expertly finessed magic tricks as acts of telekinesis. It’s a fortune he might have never earned, he said, without a group of highly agitated critics.
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