Best of: Infomericals, Part II

There is a strain of infomercial I like to call the fauxlanthromercial (a conglomeration of faux, philanthropic, and -mercial), which usually follows the formula of fake interview/newscast, where the interviewee hocks his wares: debt cures, weight loss cures, cancer cures, you name it. So let's first discuss a few issues here.

1. The Fake Show: they usually start with "welcome to healthTV," or "You're watching Total Body Network, today our guest is," is if this is a normal show, and you are just tuning into today's show, not the only show they've ever produced because this is 100% staged and paid for by the "guest."
2. This is a great sales psychology bit, but the whole idea of the show being about giving information to the viewers that will help them in the future is such larceny. In the words of the my father, "to be a salesman you have to have a bit of ganif (yiddishism for thief) in you." But still, the unsuspecting, and I suppose there are many of them out there, would definitely fall for this, and think that this is fair and balanced journalism, and this is a guest speaker with something true to offer.

The quintessential fauxlanthromercial is the Kevin Trudeau series. Ahh, Trudeau....now here is a savory character. He hocks debt cures, weight loss, natural cures, and all with the appended suffix, "...that they don't want you to know about." They. This is so crisp, because it plays on many sorry saps' inherent paranoia, and his whole premise is that these are secret cures that the government and ruling bodies are suppressing. Of course, this is targeted at poor fools  sitting on their sofas, who have or feel they have been wronged by "the man," and feeling powerless, Trudeau can break through this barrier that the FDA/AMA/USDA/FTC/SEC has erected and re-empower the obese, the addicted, the impoverished. He also likely grabs an audience with the highly gullible crowd amongst the very new-agey types, a topic which I should address in its own post, but will likely forget about it forever after this period. forgotten.
Now Trudeau's personal life and career are simply incredible. Convicted of fraudulent whathaveyou as early as 1996, he has been the subject of numerous lawsuits from "skeptical clients.": In 2004 a US federal judge ruled in favor of the FTC, awarding $37 million to wronged consumers for misrepresented claims of cancer cures using Coral Calcium, whatever the F that is. I guess "they" didnt teach me about that one in medical school. Throughout his illustrious tele-career, Trudeau has been consistently embroiled in lawsuits, convicted of felonious deeds numerous, yet he won't be stopped! He continues to practice his schemes, despite repeatedly and continually being litigated, and having verdicts handed down against him. He gets an E for Effort, but also a D for Douchebag. Somehow, and this attests to the net foolishness of the public en masse, his weight loss cures book is still a NY Times best seller, even after he was convicted of felonious misrepresentations in that very book! I love it, love it, love it. His shows are awesome, especially because they make the highly scientific claim of "you can see it working!". and you know it works, praytell?  because you are shitting out ropes of feces!! that's right, on the feux-show (fo' sho?) he illustrates the results through pictures of real live fecal ropes. Obviously, fecal ropes are proof of nothing but that fecal ropes exist, a claim of which I am already highly suspicious. But even better is the remote possibility that this is true, that his client actually held in the very hands and photographed their serpentine turds, and sent them in. Well, unfortunately for you, gentle reader, I could not find on the youtube a copy of the medical cures they don't want you to know about informercial (possibly because they don't want you to know about them). But I could find his debt cures one, which is a known pyramid scheme. So without further ado...the solution to all your debt problems: