I swear on my life that I had not read this before I made Gwyneth Paltrow the worst-possible dinner guest of all time. (And you must read it too, all of it. Yes, it’s long. Don’t care.) Here’s the opening salvo:
In retrospect, I find it rather odd that I never paid much attention to Goop. Goop (or is it goop?), as you might recall, is Gwyneth Paltrow’s beauty/health/wellness website (and, of course, online store) that’s been in the news a fair amount over the last several months. The reason is that Paltrow combines celebrity, beauty, and “wellness” with pure quackery, and every so often Goop publishes something advocating pseudoscience so outrageous that it attracts the attention of not just skeptics, but of the mainstream press and even late night comedians like Stephen Colbert. What I didn’t realize is just how broad the quackery is, and, more importantly, how it is facilitated by actual physicians working with Goop. Before I get to that, though, let’s take a brief trip down memory lane, where I’ll explain how I became aware of just how much a wretched hive of scum and quackery Goop has become.
Me myself, I don’t care about Goop, its expensive snake-oil products or the fact that it hides good old-fashioned snake-oil sales techniques behind Gwyneth Paltrow’s skinny frame. I don’t even care if The Perpetually Gullible (i.e. people who espouse the value of homeopathy) end up sticking expensive jade eggs up their vaginas and die from the agonizing infection this lunacy can cause. (Yes, such a product is available at Goop and yes, it’s solemnly pitched as an answer to various ailments such as Trump Derangement Syndrome. That last part is an absolute fabrication on my part, but it’s no less plausible than all the other earnest-but-bullshit nostrums put out by Goop.)
I bet there’s an absolute direct and full correlation (like, 1.0000) between people who believe Paltrow’s bullshit and Hillary Clinton / Bernie Saunders supporters. Not all the above are Goop acolytes, of course — but all Goop acolytes are, without a shadow of a doubt, liberals of that ilk. If you can still believe that socialism is a cure for all society’s ills after all the proof extant that it isn’t, you’ll believe anything, So feel free to clean out your colon with a Goop-endorsed boutique ostrich feather if you believe it will make you feel better about your bowel movements.
And if Goop ends up being the latest Jonestown Kool-Aid to liberals, who am I to deny their right to be a bunch of stupid, vapid morons, even if it kills them?
Charles Darwin, call your office.
Paltrow is a mildly attractive, moderately talented actress. That’s all I need from her.
I am always mildly surprised when an actor has opinions on anything other than acting that make a damn bit of sense. Acting, and especially film acting, is emoting on demand in the absence of reasonable stimuli. It just makes SENSE to me that the people who practice this art would be irrational.
I don’t avoid Jane Fonda films because she backed a bunch of fashionably traitorous positions when she was far to goddamned young to know better. She’s an actress, from an acting family. I EXPECT her political positions to be deranged. I avoid Jane Fonda movies because, unlike her Father, she cannot act, and brings down the level of any film she is in. I have, over the years, seen two Jane Fonda films that deserve their high reputations; CAT BALLOU and 9 TO 5, and in each case she was carried by much more talented co-stars. I assume that she can suck the chrome off a trailer-hitch, because I can’t see what else anyone has ever seen in her.
Paltrow believes in medical quackery. It that she is smack in the middle of Hollywood Normal; Hollywood Stars (and especially female stars) have a long history of embracing medical fringe idiocy. I stand with H. L. Mencken on this subject; if somebody believes an obviously dangerous medical fraud, I an willing to accept that he is wanted in the afterlife.
Also, and this is something we will be seeing more and more of as the bio-tech revolution gets really going – what works for one person doesn’t necessarily scale over a population. Maybe this goop DOES do wonders for Paltrow. She’s a odd individual – as Stars pretty much have to be – she may have odd body chemistry.
“I don’t avoid Jane Fonda films because she backed a bunch of fashionably traitorous positions when she was far to goddamned young to know better. ”
Jane was born in 1937. She was 30+ when most of her traitorous acts (not positions – actual acts) occurred. I’ve heard her excuses for a long time, about being too young to know better. Sorry, the age of being “too young” ends at roughly 14 to 16, depending on the person. Or 90, for guys involved in chasing wimmen.
I do agree with what you said about actors, it’s always a surprise when one of them says something mildly intelligent in public.
She was raised in Hollywood – or Whollyodd if you prefer. Most people brought up in that never DO get ‘Old enough to know better’; witness the messes most second generation actors make of their lives and careers.
Fricking dog and pony show people who are actors along with the trained monkeys and elephants who are athletes and very good at their jobs entertaining us. A few raise to the top of the manure heap making tons of money which means nothing when they decide to be do gooders and humanitarian experts telling us mere mortals how to live.
There a all sort of people in pain, real and imagined and about all this alternative bullcrap does for them is the placebo effect. If their ailment are stress induced and they believe the latest witch doctor remedy will work I am sure it will help them, almost as much as a nice glass of wine.
There are billions of dollars spent on Snake Oil and I don’t much like learning about Paltrow’s being part of it with Goop. It is kind of scary how damn dumb lots of folks are buying into this crap. A question, does Paltrow charge double if she has performed a quality control test on jade eggs?
The thing is, the placebo effect is real and can be the best hope you’ve got. Also, as we get further and further along in the current bio-tech revolution (this being, what? The third?), we are learning that while many medications broadly work for most people, we are coming up on a generation of medsmthat will have to be tailored to individuals. And won’t the FDA make a mess of THAT.
I think Paltrow is so full of dung her eyesmare brown, amd they people using her name to seel their snake-oil should bee keel-hauled….under an aircraft carrier. But that’s my opinion, and I’m not sure enough that I’m right to want to give the government the power to stop it.
Accepted medical wisdom was that ulcers were,caused by stress and bad diet. The very ideamthat they might be caused by bacteria was ridiculed…until somebody risked his life to prove it.
Hell, the silly broad may be onto something.
Dad used to keep a can of Goop in the garage to clean the grease and oil off his hands when he finished working on the cars. Great stuff that goop. Used it a time or three myownself when “assisting” as a young lad.
Sarge, Out
“… pitched as an answer to various ailments such as Trump Derangement Syndrome…”
If it kills you, it has cured your TDS, or at least ended it.
Interesting about how those into pseudo-scientific nonsense will play the “just raising questions” card when backed into a corner by facts. And it is sad how they will immediately forget any facts inconvenient, sometimes during the course of the conversation.
I have a relative that is a flat-earther- a belief system so stupid, one needs to be on some serious medicinal herbs to buy into it, and he had some serious red eye, if you know what I mean. And like most into nonsense, he loudly proclaimed his “research”, all the while demonstrating serious ignorance of any science or tech related to his pet theory. He didn’t know what a Doppler shift was, or how radio direction finding works, or what a “great circle” route was. “Research”, to this lot involves watching yootoob videos with lots of cherry picked “gee whiz” facts and a big helping of conspiracy theories.
I blame it on the modern educational system- teach kids to believe the nonsense the government churns out, and they’ll pretty much believe anything.
The Z Man recently said it best about women bloggers:
“I tend to stay away from women’s blogs because they mostly write about themselves, their plumbing, or other women…”
I live under a rock. I dunno who this chick is, and could care less. To me, celebs are dancing monkeys put on this earth for my entertainment. If I like their dance I put a coin in their cup. Otherwise I ignore them as much as possible and regard more than a few of them as unsavoury perverts and public enemies. I don’t have the time or energy for stupid people.
“I tend to stay away from women’s blogs because they mostly write about themselves, their plumbing, or other women…”
Contra: Althouse, Sarah Hoyt, Sergeant Mom, Stoaty Weasel…
OK, they all write about themselves, but so do male bloggers, such as our host.
Althouse and Hoyt are guilty as charged; don’t read the other ones. Having said that – they can be interesting writers at times.
Others? Not so much…