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Penn & Teller duped?

DavoMan

Critical Thinker
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Messages
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I recently watched a wee clip on youtube about a wacko that ******** interviews at a UFO convention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zUW4cXtczA&mode=related&search=

What bugs me is the title - 'Fake UFO Society Fools Showtime'. It has a URL to the guy's myspace page at the end of it.
http://www.myspace.com/harmonleon

Now this guy appears to be a comedian guy who dresses up in costumes and goes under cover. He's mentioned in his page and on several sites as appearing in Penn & Teller's ********.

Was this guy bating Showtime's intervewers?
 
Check out this wiki entry on Harmon Leon: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmon_Leon

"Harmon Leon is a primarily a humorist, though he has also done some stand-up. He has contributed to Wired Magazine, Salon.com, National Lampoon, and NPR. His typical comedic style is to impersonate a character, infiltrate some organization, then write about the experience, thus relating the absurdities of modern American life."
 
Then, he needs to be removed. I have no problem with legitimate reporters doing such (since the source using their reports stands to lose - often largely - if they are dishonest). With these Drudge-like things, dishonesty is a way of life - meaning their information is of no value.
 
I'm sure P&T would see the funny side. I really don't see the harm in comedians operating in this way, but then, I'm a big Shirley Ghostman fan. Didn't stop me cringing and hoping that Chris French and the other sceptics invited to take part, would realise that it was BS and call Marc Wootton on it. I can see why some sceptics would be down on people like this for "queering the pitch", "muddying the waters" or whatever, but arguably magicians and mentalists do this de facto to any viewer not 100% aware that every aspect of their act is...an act.

People are entitled to explore the subject in a different way; this guy seems like he's spreading awareness of woo via satire just as Marc Wootton did, even if he isn't laying into it quite as viciously as the latter, and even if he isn't dipping into the sceptical playbook to do it.
 
JimTheBrit said:
Aren't these the two that P&T out as performance artists later in the same episode?
Click to expand...

Yup! As a matter of fact, right after that clip, Penn says "You see that smirk? This is performance art!"

I was pretty impressed with Penn's ability to spot that. But then, he's a performance artist himself.
 
Holy cow. They actually say that? I had better check. Thanks for spotting that. I guess I'm the duped one.
 
DavoMan said:
Holy cow. They actually say that? I had better check. Thanks for spotting that. I guess I'm the duped one.
Click to expand...

I missed that part too. I think the guy is pretty funny. And it takes balls to go undercover as a real woo and try not to smirk. I wonder if he just went and Penn and Teller showed up--or if he knew they'd be there.

Who better to get a glimpse into the inner world of woo than to pretend to be an actual woo. It's sort of like 60 minutes meets George Pimpton with a dash of Colbert mixed with heady youth--

I give him 2 thumbs up.

He says he "goes undercover in right wing America"--Penn is a Liberatarian. I've heard some people refer to that as the "far right", but I don't consider Libertarians or Penn Jillette to be part of the red state subsystem this guy infiltrates--seems to me, they are playing on the same team on this undercover expose. Wasn't he the guy with the weird head thing in the show? How many of you guys have the balls to appear on television as a full blown woo woo?
 
Horatius said:
Yes, he says something like, "see that smirk? He thinks he's putting one over on us." Penn pranked the prankster.
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Of course, since the shows are filmed in a linear fashion it is entirely possible that they were duped and only found out later, so they can comment knowing he was a fraud despite not actuallt knowing this at the time. Just a thought.
 
Cuddles said:
Of course, since the shows are filmed in a linear fashion it is entirely possible that they were duped and only found out later, so they can comment knowing he was a fraud despite not actuallt knowing this at the time. Just a thought.
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Penn and Teller don't attend the interviews so if anyone was "duped" it was the on location interviewer and cameraman. Without knowing the cameraman and interviewer I doubt they thought two guys claiming to have $17 were serious.
 
DavoMan said:
I recently watched a wee clip on youtube about a wacko that ******** interviews at a UFO convention.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zUW4cXtczA&mode=related&search=

What bugs me is the title - 'Fake UFO Society Fools Showtime'. It has a URL to the guy's myspace page at the end of it.
http://www.myspace.com/harmonleon

Now this guy appears to be a comedian guy who dresses up in costumes and goes under cover. He's mentioned in his page and on several sites as appearing in Penn & Teller's ********.

Was this guy bating Showtime's intervewers?
Click to expand...

In the show, they *do* say that they think this guy's some sort of actor. So I'm not sure they're being 'duped'.
 
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