…Tony Robbins! Tell me you’re surprised. He’s another over-inflated ass with no real talent or expertise beyond self-promotion, he maintains a secretive self-help empire, he’s a creepy cult leader, and he practically oozes privilege and greed. Of course he’d be full of himself and his bad opinions, and he’d expect his underlings to serve him in every way possible.
One woman had told him through tears that she had been raped. Robbins recounted how he had “cut her off” in a “warm” and “elegant” way and informed her that she was “fucking using all this stuff to try and control men.”
Every man who silences a woman who has been raped believes that they did it elegantly, I’m sure. Especially when they go on to blame the victim.
Don’t worry, he doesn’t support rape, he just thinks it unimportant.
“I don’t support anybody fucking raping her or taking advantage of her,” he said, according to the transcript, “but I don’t support her fucking manipulating herself, men, and other people by trying to use that tool when it’s really not the primary experience of her life now.”
Of course, he has a theory. He has no academic training or expertise at all — he does have a high school diploma, at least, but nothing beyond that — but he paints himself as a psychological authority.
By now, Robbins had set himself up as an authority on relationships, dispensing a theory about “two opposing energies — masculine and feminine.”
“Women’s torment is that men fucking look, and men’s torment is that women are fucking insane,” he said at the same 2003 event.
He’s made billions of dollars off that kind of bullshit. It’s about time someone took him down a few thousand notches.
It’s about time this gets more attention – I hope this creep’s empire burns to ground.
He’d make a great Republican congressman.
[Cynical sarcasm mode] Women’s torment is that men are jerks. The “insanity” is an evolutionary adaptation in order to be attracted to said jerks.
Ross & Carrie did a three-part podcast of attending a Tony Robbins convention.
@curbydogma
You just echoed, as did Robbins, the old quote from Kurt Vonnegut:
“All men are jerks, all women are psychotic.”
Except, of course, you and Kurt were using that satirically to point out absurdities in the human condition. Unfortunately, Robbins is stupid enough to actually mean it.
“but I don’t support her fucking manipulating herself, men, and other people by trying to use that tool when it’s really not the primary experience of her life now.”
When I hear the word “rape” I don’t immediately launch into incomprehensible psychobabble, but then again I’m not a successful self-help author with a net worth of half a billion, so what the fuck do I know?
My first exposure to Tony Robbins was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, illustrated with a photo of one of the firewalks he used to espouse. When he came on the scene in the 80s, he was using the bafflegab of “neurolinguistic programming” to “explain” how brain power could overcome the heat of burning coals and enable people to walk barefoot across a firepit. His acolytes gushed about how he empowered them to control physical reality and preserve their tender tootsies from nasty blisters (provided they walked fast enough!). Pseudoscience all the way, from the very beginning.
#5 stwriley:
Yeah, and it’s been kind of unsettling at the number of people who honestly, sincerely and actually believe the broad-brushed caricatures, as if we were living in a cartoon world (just check any “mainstream” news comments section)
I don’t think there are words for the sheer exhaustion and discouragement I feel when I read or hear about men like this. I’m so damn tired of the whole pointlessness of their cruelty and ignorance and immaturity. It’s times like these when I know that people who say gay people can change their sexuality are imbeciles, because if that were true and if the only guys around were guys like this, I would choose lesbianism in a freaking second.
But there are good guys out there. I’ve known quite a few. It just seems hard to remember when it’s only the assholic, toxic, idiotic man-children who have all the money and power.
Wow I thought this was about Tommy Robinson, which wouldn’t surprise me. Though I guess Tony Robbins shouldn’t have surprised me.
Somewhat off topic, but in the article it says they offered to pay one guy “$3,485” to shut up. How do lawyers arrive at these figures? If you’re paying someone off, why not $3500? Is the extra $15 going to break them or destroy their legal case if it comes to that? I don’t get it.
@ridana:
Usually it’s some round number + legal fees. In some cases cases there might be a few expenses that the lawyers also wanted to reimburse for separately. My guess is that this is either 2500 + expenses that happened to add up to 985 or 2000 + 1485. If the person being paid to shut up did not have a lawyer of their own, it almost certainly would have been a round number with the person being paid just making sure that the number was big enough they had a reasonable amount leftover after expenses. So the amount argues against the person representing themself. However, if the person did have a lawyer, just 2-4 hours (depending on the lawyer) would add up to more than $485, and therefore I discount the likelihood that the settlement was for $3k + expenses.
I say all that to tell you what I think is really going on behind the amount, since you seemed to want to know. If that’s too much detail however, I can only apologize and ask that you ask the teen genius from See You Yesterday to help you unread this.
I sincerely miss Caine’s riposte to this bilge.
this “guy’s’ response just says “how dare you bring up reality when the story I am selling is so much better.”
I bet he even half believes it too.
uncle frogy
I think most divorce attorneys would agree that men are jerks and women are psychotic, but that’s probably partly because of the specific men and women they encounter on a day to day basis. By the way, I once had a client tell a judge in open court that if her husband wanted the furniture he could have it and she hoped he would have a heart attack and die in it. And I once had a male client convert all the family assets to cash and then burn it rather than split it with his soon to be ex. Neither judge was amused.
I picked him out as a flaming jerkwad custard-head a long time ago. He used to stop by Phoenix to lay down his line of BS.
See, it is fine to complain about being raped while it is happening, but, once it is over, since it is not part of her life, she should not talk about it, not try to get the rapists to stop, not try to get the rapists in trouble. So I guess all of the survivors in the world need to just shut up. Unless it happens again. But only while it is happening
From the Encyclopedia of American Loons:
It also reminds me this was teh eejit who was big into firewalking yonks ago, and somehow convinced several of the people he burned it was all their own fault.
Every accusation is a confession with these people, because now Robbins can and will continue to shamelessly market himself as a victim Speaking Truth to Crazy Bitches.
@blf, #18: The trick to firewalking is to keep your feet dry so hot embers won’t stick to them. Also, walk fast so there’s minimal contact with the burning surface. (Damn, no magic involved.)
christoph@19, Yes, I know. Plus the fact that whilst the embers are hot (high temperature) they don’t actually contain much heat (and also aren’t very heat-conductive). All of that is why the fad, and especially the motivational scamming like this eejit did, was both hilarious and sad.
Another key to successful fire-walking is to conduct it after dark so the now comparatively cool coals glow through the insulating ash on top and look hotter than they really are.