The most noticeable aspect of the pair of stories that Associated Press Chicago correspondent Tara Burghart filed last weekend about The Secret, the bestselling guide to “the law of attraction” and the power of positive thinking, isn’t that she got two articles out of Rhonda Byrne‘s book—one focusing on the rational criticism of its “be happy” philosophy and the other on the 19th- and 20th-century sources for Byrne’s big ideas. That’s impressive, of course, but what struck me right off the bat was how late to the game Burghart was. I mean, The Secret is so February.
And the critical article doesn’t even get into one of the most interesting attacks on The Secret‘s credibility, this 11-minute feature from the Australian version of A Current Affair that takes a hard look at Richard Schirmer, one of the “experts” who appears in the Secret DVD. He’s an investment guru who says his financial success stems in part from visualizing checks coming in the mail, but apparently life’s not that simple:
Schirmer attempted to repair his reputation via YouTube shortly after.