Miss Information?

“Cawll meh now!” was Miss Cleo’s Siren Call for the gullible masses in the late 1990s.

“99 cents a minute to have all of my life’s problems answered by a Jamaican/West Indian/generally Caribbean woman? What a steal! This shaman is so much better than therapy with a licensed doctor!” thought Blockhead.

Take this interchange from one of Miss Cleo’s better-known commercials to show the level of chump we’re dealing with here:

Cleo: “...And it was on a little cul-de-sac?”

“Real Caller”: “Right! This is amazing me!”

Cleo: “It’s okay — it amazes me every time I do it, too.”

THE REASON IT AMAZES HER EVERY TIME SHE DOES IT? Because she’s lying through her teeth every damn time, so guessing something accurate from a caller’s past is nearly as good as winning low-stakes lottery.

Flimflammer; charlatan; “confidence man.” A lot of names for the same thing: someone who hawks snake oil to the masses, pretending he/she’s got just the answer to fix your crappy little life (lookin’ at you, Ex-Governor/Fox News correspondent Palin).

But where Palin and these shoddy salesmen differ is important: while Palin is dangerously serious and has the following to prove it, that ShamWow! dude has absolutely no following — except perhaps when he gets into scuffles with prostitutes.

Indeed, what’s enduringly awesome — albeit a little pathetic —about late-night infomercials is that these weirdly charismatic salesmen consistently dupe dopey consumers into buying absurd material goods. These consumers wake up the next day; look into that express-shipped box from QVC; and hope to see four-leaf clovers, gold coins and a tiny, stereotypically rendered leprechaun.

Still, unlike their rabid and irrational trust in politicians, consumers seem to know on some level that these products are too good to be true. If that DIY churro maker doesn’t work, well, shoot, they might be out $19.99 plus shipping and handling. Plus, they have to keep that stupid free gift that they didn’t even want in the first place. But that’s okay: the infomercial-watching-and–purchasing audience always seems forgiving enough that nary is there an insomniac bored with late-night TV; the crap just keeps on comin’!

In the spirit of this brand of suave selling, these next few articles are our salute to infomercials and the people who pitch them: this time, we’re going to focus on arguably the top three most famous infomercial personalities of the last ten years. Next article, we’ll read some reviews of notable infomercial products to see if they live up to their outrageous claims.

Miss Cleo

A veritable powerhouse among infomercial-hawkers, Miss Cleo is like the centaur of television pitching. Part saleswoman, part shaman (shamaness?), part con-woman, part fake-Jamaican, she is a mysterious hybrid of a performer — and like the centaur, equally as difficult to locate in real life.

Born in LA, she had big dreams of making it big (as so many Californians do). Back then, her name was Youree “Ree” Harris, and she and her partner produced many plays — one of which was her autobiographic play, Women Only: A Celebration of Love, Life and Healing (1996). Kind of like the con-artist troupe consisting of The Duke and the Dauphin in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Wikipedia states that “Ree” “left town with a trail of debts and broken promises” because she never paid her crew for their performance, citing insurmountable personal debts due to a fabricated case of bone cancer.

Promising start.

She then resettled and gained a cushier job at the Psychic Friends Network, acting as Miss Cleo. Interesting that she was so comfortable with being on television, considering that she was in it deep back in Seattle ... but I suppose she felt that the head wraps and fake accent were enough cover-up. Then again, maybe consumers were too transfixed by the iTunes Visualizer/Windows 95 screensaver background to notice her face.

When it finally started hitting fans in 1999 (wait, it took people over three years to recognize that Miss Cleo wasn’t actually talking to their dead dog?), Youree followed her mental divining rod for all things dubious to Fort Lauderdale, FL, where she has been working since 2003 at various shaman agencies, charging $200 for one-on-one tarot readings.

Wow, you’ve schemed a lot of people with a lot of crap, Miss Cleo. Incredible.

Billy Mays (RIP)

Billy Mays — what can I say? I’m not one to defile the dead, so I’m not going to do it. I’m not even going to make fun of him, at least not really. He was a good salesman. A loud salesman, but a good one.

As Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post wrote of him, “[He was] a full-volume pitchman, amped up like a candidate for a tranquilizer-gun takedown.”

Indeed. Accosting a viewer’s attention by screaming like a rabid elephant about cleaning products helped him push OrangeGlo and OxyClean down many a disgruntled housewife’s throat. In fact, my favorite time to see him was when I was watching The View. Going from the ladies kvetching about the latest “Hot Topics” to Mr. Mays yelling about powdered hydrogen peroxide seemed comparatively soothing — not to mention most logical.

Fast living was the fast-talking huckster’s downfall; according to autopsy reports, cocaine was reported to have hastened Mr. May’s death. Billy Mays was known to have hypertensive heart disease, and I’m sure the hard days pawning The Awesome Auger, Kaboom!, Mighty Putty and the Ultimate Chopper didn’t mediate his stress levels.

Every time I put a scoop of your OxyClean fairy dust on either my whites or my colors (It’s so great! It won’t bleach your clothes!), I think of you, Billy.

Anthony “Sully” Sullivan

If Anthony Sullivan isn’t indication that a “sexy British accent” will help you sell anything in the US, then maybe you should go watch a Dyson vacuum cleaner commercial. You will inexplicably desire a Dyson for its “innovative design and awesome sucking power.”

And if Dyson’s thing is “sucking,” Anthony “Sully” Sullivan’s thing is emphatically ... not.

In fact, one of the most popular products Mr. Sullivan pushes is a rubberized broom, claiming that it will pick up pet hair from any type of surface. Known as the “The One Sweep,” it is a broom that fondly fills many of my somnambulant memories of early teenage years.

Incidentally one of Billy Mays’ best friends, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Mays appear to have crossed paths (or at least products) when Mr. Sullivan began to suavely sell his “Smart Chopper” in direct competition with Mays’ “Ultimate Chopper.” On the occasion of Mays’ death, Sullivan put aside his sales shtick and said honestly: “I'm gonna miss you so much buddy. I'm gonna miss you saying 'Hi Billy Mays here!', You don't know how much I'm going to miss that.”

Though perhaps less well known than either Billy Mays or Miss Cleo, Anthony Sullivan has earned fame (or notoriety) in his own way: he has starred on Discovery Channel’s documentary, PitchMen, alongside Billy Mays.

So join me in following these intrepid sales warriors to my next column, in which we will dissect their — and other pitch peoples’ — crappy inventions to see if they work.

In the meantime, just thank your deity that none of these people have decided to run for public office.