Cynics Unlimited

Sylvia Browne, the famed and controversial psychic, has once again delivered hear yearly predictions on the Montell Williams show. Far from being a simple $20 fortune teller, Brown has parlayed her self-proclaimed expertise into several books, regular television appearances and even a Gnostic Church.

Here are some of Sylvia’s more noteworthy predictions for the year:

• The USA will have an extremely mild winter, especially on the East Coast. Canada will have a harsh winter
• There will be lots of extreme weather during 2007. This will include flooding in the south and a possible “Tsunami” on the east coast
• 8 years until a black American president
• Spirituality is going to soar in the United States (not to be confused with religion)
• Evangelicals will have a difficult 2007 as they come to grips with revelations that many of their leaders have been robbing them blind
• There will be no terrorist attacks on a 9/11 scale, though there is cause for concern about trucks and trains
• Gas prices will drop sharply in February
• Overall, 2007 will be a comfortable year

Overall, I found Sylvia’s predictions to be vague or “obvious”, but as always Montell fawned relentless over her as self-conscious audience members covertly sought assurance about their immediate future.

Now, there are a lot of people who don’t believe in psychics and truthfully I’m sitting on the fence myself (having once been intrigued by Ms Brown’s literature before discovering her other business exploits); however Sylvia Browne is questioned even within the psychic community. One statistic that is never discussed on Montell Williams is how often Sylvia gets her predictions WRONG. Incidentally, Browne has many detractors both in and outside the psychic community who are more than happy to point them out. Below is a passage from the Fox News account of her now infamous Virginia Coal Mine blunder:

Controversial TV psychic Sylvia Browne made a major mistake about the West Virginia miners tragedy on a Tuesday night radio show.

I always like it when psychics are asked, ‘If you know so much, how come you haven’t won the lottery or cashed in big in Vegas or in stocks?’

Maybe Browne was thinking the same thing when she was a guest on George Noory’s live syndicated radio show
…
Noory: “Had you been on the program today, would [you] have felt if — because they heard no sound — that this was a very gloomy moment — and that they might have all died?”

Browne: “No. I knew they were going to be found. I hate people that say something after the fact. It’s just like I knew when the pope was dead. Thank God I was on Montel’s show. I said, according to the time, it was 9-something and whatever Rome time was. And I said he was gone, and he was.”

But the situation was fluid, something Browne — ahem! — obviously didn’t sense despite her claims of being able to speak to the dead, among other things. She couldn’t have imagined that within a short time, the entire story of the miners would change completely — and make her look very foolish indeed.

Noory soon announced that there were new reports that all but one of the miners was dead.

Browne — who was still in the studio taking questions from listeners — had to say something. Now she was just riffing: “I don’t think there’s anybody alive, maybe one. How crazy for them to report that they were alive when they weren’t!” Then she added: “I just don’t think they are alive.” She cleared her throat, and there was a deafening pause.

Noory went to a commercial.

Detailed information can be found at True or False, although the site has an obvious bias against Sylvia Brown. In the meantime, we will wait to see the accuracy of this year’s predictions.

Update: Sylvia Drops the Ball Again