Pop-off, Peter

Peter Popoff is not a porn star. \nHe is a faux-televangelist peddling matchbox-sized packets of "miracle spring water" on late-night infomercials.\nOne "believer" ordered a packet of the special sauce and claims it saved her life.\n"I had a stroke, praise God, about a year ago," a middle-aged woman in the front row says. "I was disfigured in my face. I couldn't sit up. I couldn't do anything. But when I received the miracle water I anointed my body all over and look at me now. I'm walking, I'm talking. I'm sitting up. And I never looked like I even had a stroke, thank God."\nWe'll not delve in to how an ounce of water can cover a grown woman's entire body. What worries me is that Popoff is a known fraud. In the 1980s, Popoff was not only a healer, but he was also in direct contact with God, he claimed He paraded around auditoriums and accurately recited specific information about audience members before grabbing and shaking the beSatan out of them.\nFinally, in 1987, a skeptic named James Randi exposed Popoff's scam on the Johnny Carson Show. The reverend's wife was feeding him info-blurbs on frequency 39.17 MHz, according to an article in Science and the Paranormal magazine. Popoff listened to his wife's transmissions on a tiny earpiece. Ironically, the healer insisted the device was a hearing aid.\nNow Popoff, despised by informed Christians and loathed by nearly everyone else, screams and rants about Jesus on his late-night infomercial while "healing" ailing folks. \nBy "healing," I mean assaulting them. One man on Popoff's late-night spot complains of a sore arm, so the fake grabs the man by the ears and gives his head the paint-can treatment.\n"The Lord said to shake him a little bit," Popoff belts. "So I'm gonna shake him."\nThese antics are all parts of his business gimmick. To finish the package, he compiles videos of his endeavors into the late-night infomercial using a few testimonials from simple (ignorant) people who say his maniacal spring water brought them stuff -- no fewer than three women claimed their houses were bought with the water.\nI was befuddled when I heard their claims, and I wanted to do some research. So I called IU Economics Professor Arlington Williams, and he said it's not possible to purchase homes with miracle spring water.\n"Was that the actual medium of exchange?" he said. "No, I've never heard of that."\nAnd neither have I.\nHoly homes aside, I find it troubling that Popoff is legally allowed to manipulate the ideology of faith and swindle money from otherwise honest people with the promise that he can speak with God and solve all their problems. The water is offered to viewers for "free," but once a caller donates his or her address and telephone number, all bets are off. According to entries on an Internet petition site, www.thepetitionsite.com, Popoff endlessly sends letters to subscribers asking for money. One petitioner, Anonymous from Maine, left this entry:\n"I've given him $50. I thought he could help me."\nAnd so men like Popoff feed on the tired, the poor, the huddled masses in America, those yearning for a better lot in life. He asks a broken woman for $50 and in return he sends the tempest-tossed a packet of spring water and explicitly tells her it will solve all her problems. The woman is so desperate, she has no other choice but to believe him. Popoff gets $50 richer, the woman gets $50 poorer, and when she has a change in fortune, Popoff's mysticism leads her to believe his packet of spring water has saved her life.\n"God blessed me with a brand new home, built from the ground. $147,000. I am so happy."\nOf course she is. Ignorance is bliss.