OCR: In Defense of Chip Coffey

To recap: Chip Coffey exploits children on the A&E show Psychic Kids by telling them they have powers they don’t and that imaginary demons can attack him. Like many other quasi-New Age charlatans, he tries to couch his paranormal “abilities” in his Native American heritage, though his famous Cherokee shaman great-grandmother was neither famous nor a shaman. The only testimonial on his website that offers verifiable information turns out to be a demonstrable lie. And there’s no record of the master’s degree in counseling he brags about in his official bio. I’d call the man an asshole, but those can sometimes be pleasant.

What I won’t tolerate, however, is some of the ignorant bigotry being thrown Coffey’s way by several posters on skeptical message boards across the interwebs. The vast majority of the reaction against Coffey and Psychic Kids comes from a place of reasonable outrage and disgust, but there have also been some disturbingly homophobic remarks as well. There’s really no polite, delicate way to put this, but Coffey seems to be a gay man. Whether he is or isn’t shouldn’t matter to anyone at all. And the stupidest remarks have come from morons who equate homosexuality with pedophilia. Yes, reinforcing a child’s mental delusions without the supervision of a medical professional constitutes psychological abuse. But to imply anything further than that is not only baseless, it’s juvenile, brain-dead, and reprehensible. If you’re an ignorant homophobe, you have no place defending science and reason in any way.

For those of you who are rationally minded and want to do something about the televised horror that is Psychic Kids, try e-mailing the executives at A&E responsible for putting it on the air. The first season is finished, but there’s still time to make sure a second season never happens. In your letters, you might want to explain to these people the implicit logical problem with the disclaimer they run before each episode. In it, the network states that the views about the paranormal expressed in the show don’t necessarily reflect their own. But if this is the case, and the executives at A&E don’t believe in the pseudoscientific nonsense of mediumship, demons, and psychic powers, then how is this show not abusive to these children?

Write to:
Abbe Raven (CEO):
Abbe.Raven@aetn.com
Whitney Goit (Senior Executive Vice President):
whitney.goit@aetn.com
Robert DeBitetto (Executive Vice President):
robert.debitetto@aetn.com
Colleen Conway (Director, Non-Fiction Programming):
colleen.conway@aetn.com

Thanks to Brendy at the JREF forum for providing the links.

Now, I know I’m going to receive some criticism for speaking against ridiculing Chip Coffey’s sexuality while having previously ridiculed his physical appearance. There are many reasons why one is okay and the other isn’t—mostly having to do with fighting a widespread and irrational hatred toward an entire group of human beings—but I’ll leave you with a simple one: Chip’s sexuality does nothing to hurt these poor children, but those creepy googly eyes might just give them even more nightmares.

OCR: The Mysterious Master's

Chip Coffey would love for you to think that he has some kind of special training in addition to his psychic powers that qualifies him to counsel disturbed children on A&E’s Psychic Kids. And just to make this clear, when I refer to Chip’s “psychic powers”, I’m talking about his uncanny knack for saying he can see and feel invisible beings no one else can see or feel. In his official bio, after mentioning his relation to the unkown-to-anyone-else “famed” Native American medicine woman Minnie Sue Morrow Foster, he says he has a master’s degree in counseling. You’d think this kind of education would enhance his ability to soothe the troubled minds of the poor children he parades on his show, but since when do trained counselors tell kids that the demons in their heads are not only real, but are also attacking them?

I couldn’t find any reference to where Chip may have earned his master’s in his information online. Just lots of overlit pictures of him touching tomb stones and staring into space. So, I contacted his college lecture booking agent to ask about these mysterious credentials. I’d say I was shocked and dismayed to discover that an accredited university would pay heard-earned tuition money to have Chip Coffey point and wave and pretend to see invisible spirits, but my alma mater once booked a Creed concert. One may be worse than the other. Anyway, Chip’s agency was more than happy to share any information I needed—except for anything about his master’s in counseling. To quote: “[Chip] doesn't give the name of his graduate school because he has had some invasion of privacy issues with people contacting old classmates and professors. I thought it seemed a little weird too, but as he is not an academic, but a paranormal investigator, I didn't think it mattered that much.”

The hell? I’m not interested in hounding your old school buddies, Chip. I just want to know if demonology was part of the core curriculum at your school.

Maybe, I thought, if I could track down his undergraduate degree, I might be able to find out where he earned his vaporous master’s. I’m sure I Googled Chip’s name almost as much as he does before I found a mention of him graduating from Elmira College, a very beautiful looking campus in New York state. Oddly enough, Elmira College doesn’t seem to offer a master’s in counseling. I hate to say it, but it’s starting to look like Chip may have fudged his credentials a little bit. But who am I to judge? Every day, I pray my employers don’t check on the whole Nicaraguan guerilla training area of my résumé.

I work for the CIA, by the way. Don’t tell anyone.

Just for shits and giggles (mostly giggles), I paid a degree verification service $6.50 of my hard-earned money to check up on just Chip’s undergraduate degree. Maybe he double majored in psychology and demonology? Turns out I might as well have saved the cash for the Subway discount menu, however, since no one could turn up any record of Chip having graduated from Elmira College at all. Now, there could be a reasonable explanation for this. Maybe “Chip” is a nickname (god, I hope so). Maybe there’s some kind of clerical error.

Chip, if you’re reading this, could you drop me a line and let me know just what kind of counseling training you have? I’d really like to know which of your esteemed predecessors originated the therapeutic method of telling kids the reason they’re scared of the dark is because ghosts are trying to catch them.

OCR: Telling Testimonials

If there's one marketing tool favored the most by quacks and frauds, it's the testimonial. Think about it, you have all the benefits of making concrete claims without the accountability, credibility, or fact-based nature of actual data. Who cares if magnetic mattress pads don't actually cure your crooked spine? Laura from Topeka, Kansas says they make her feel a whole lot better. And who are you to argue with a semi-anonymous Midwesterner with no medical training?

As a professional psychic medium, Chip Coffey can't make any actual claims for his services. Just like Taco Bell can't tell you you're getting real beef while selling you that amorphous paste they've injected in your burrito, Coffey can't claim the $400 an hour you give him will definitely buy a few seconds of strained charades with the ghost of your dear old granddad. This is why his website begrudgingly acknowledges that his "readings" are for "entertainment purposes only" and that "psychic readings cannot predict, forecast , diagnose or provide information with absolute certainty." I tried the same legal gymnastics with my short-lived pest control company Bugz-Off, but word quickly spread that I just had no idea how to kill and/or not run screaming from a swarm of termites.

If only I'd had a testimonial like this one from ChipCoffey.com:

"My family was hoping to move and we were looking for the perfect home. Chip told me that we would find it within a month and also advised me to look for the number '73.'

We found a house that we liked, but it wasn't 'perfect.' On the morning that we were planning to sign the contract to buy this house, I decided to look, just once more, on the Internet at the listings of homes that were for sale.

I found my dream home! It was everything that we were looking for and more! I called out to my husband and he was just as excited as I was. We decided to go and look at the house ... and when we finally looked at the exact address, I was stunned to discover that the street number of the house was '73'!

Chip was right! We are now living in our dream home ... at 73 Ocean View Terrace!"

Rose M.
Orinda, California

This is a sweet story. Good thing Rose ignored that bit about "entertainment purposes only" and chose to follow Chip Coffey's real estate advice. Who knew he was such a renaissance psychic? But upon closer examination, I noticed a slight problem with this testimonial. Turns out there isn't a 73 Ocean View Terrace in Orinda, California. There isn't an Ocean View Terrace at all in Orinda, California.

As a professional courtesy, Chip, I'm advising you to change this address to something a little more, I don't know, realish. Or just leave it. If it takes too much of your time away from exploiting disturbed children on national television, then it's probably not worth the trouble.

OCR: The Beginning

You've seen him on Paranormal State making bug eyes and waving his arms around as he pretends to be a psychic medium. Now A&E, your one stop shop for racist bounty hunters and Criss Angel's greasy sex appeal, brings us Psychic Kids, a new low in television history starring Chip Coffey. Psychic Kids takes the worst element of Paranormal State, Coffey's ridiculous attempts to "help" "psychic" children by telling them spirits invade their heads and demons attack their brains, and turns it into the whole goddamn show.

Where fake psychic (redundant?) Sylvia Browne just abuses the parents of missing children, Coffey cuts out the middle man and goes after the kids themselves. But who am I to judge? What harm could possibly come from telling a child those things going bump in the night aren't just real, they're out to get you!

Enter Operation: Coffey Roast. Sure, I could have come up with a better name (and I definitely could have come up with a better logo), but I struggled with a phrase that would evoke a feeling of spoiled Coffey. Operation: Too Much Creamer? Not as punchy.

The prime ingredient for a good roast is a healthy pinch of lampooning, which will be an important part of OCR. In the weeks ahead, I'll be featuring interesting factoids about Chip Coffey on this site. First up? The question of Coffey's paranormal heritage. In his bio, he claims to be the great-grandson of famous Cherokee medicine woman and shaman Minnie Sue Morrow Foster. For someone so famous, it's curious that the only references to her that come up on Google are from Coffey's bio and from a message board for real-live Native Americans discussing how they've never heard of her. Also, "shaman" isn't a Native American term. I suppose InStyle magazine was right in describing Coffey as "a cross between John Edward and Dr. Phil." They're all giant douchebags.

Assuming Psychic Kids and Paranormal State are still on the air by this Labor Day weekend, OCR operatives will be meeting at Dragon*Con in Coffey's hometown of Atlanta, Georgia to demonstrate against Coffey's childsploitation, do some heavy drinking, and maybe play a game or two of Dungeons & Dragons. Good times.

So good, in fact, that Coffey considered the announcement of OCR to be a physical threat. Here's the email he sent me about the original OCR blog post I wrote at CHUD.com:

Yesterday, Brian Thompson posted a blog on CHUD.com with content including what certainly appears to be a personal threat against my safety that he is planning during Dragon*Con.

I have alerted the authorities regarding this threat.

-Chip Coffey-

How self-important can a fake psychic be? Why would anyone threaten physical harm against a guy when making fun of him is so much more fulfilling? For example: Is that a chin or is he trying to mate with a toad? See? So much better than physical harm.

Also, who writes to someone and refers to him in the third person? What an odd man.

Just to make things perfectly clear, Chip, no one wants to hurt you. We just want you off television so we can get back to watching racist bounty hunters. And if you really want to impress, why not take some time away from scaring the bujeezus out of little kids and appear at Dragon*Con for a public debate?

And if anyone reading this wants to become an OCR operative, write to me at brian (at) amateurscientist.org. And in the meantime, you can build up your alcohol tolerance by playing the Psychic Kids drinking game. During the show, you take a shot every time Chip Coffey makes up something horrible to tell an innocent child. Just don't blame me if you die of alcohol poisoning.