Jason Alexander is as delusional as Shannon Elizabeth

Since I picked on Shannon Elizabeth yesterday, I might as well share with you another roasting of a poker-playing celebrity that I did in the same yet-unfinished article that I started writing last year. I couldn't (and didn't really want to) find a photo of Jason Alexander in a bikini. I think that the above is about as close as any of us will want to get.

Here's what I wrote:

Paranormal vision

Jason Alexander, best known for playing
George Costanza on “Seinfeld,” is one of many television and movie stars who
play poker with some regularity and seriousness in public events. An article in
Bluff magazine recently profiled his poker thoughts and experience. In the
interview, he claimed an ability which, if real and reproducible, would make him
the most formidable player in the history of the game—being able to see, through
mental imagery, what card the dealer was next going to turn over:

“I’ve got to tell you that in the last two tournaments I played…I’ve gone
to this very quiet place and I have mentally pictured what the turn or the river
card is going to be and if it doesn’t come up for me in that moment of fantasy,
I get out; but if I saw the card and played it, good things would come. I don’t
know if it was instinctual or that third-eye thing. I’ve played some risky hands
when I was in big trouble, and, of late, it’s really paid off. You know, I just
saw it happen as if it had been turned.” [1]

Fortunately for Mr. Alexander, the rules of poker do not disallow such
clairvoyance (as long as it is not the result of collusion with the dealer). But
one has to wonder why, with such ability, he does not win every time he plays. I
assume that this talent, if it could be repeated under controlled conditions,
would also readily qualify for James Randi’s $1 million prize for demonstration
of supernatural abilities. I have not heard that the actor has not made
application for this money. Of course, he may not need the money, but he could
donate it to a charity of his choice. Perhaps he simply does not know of its
existence.

[1] Michael Friedman, “Jason Alexander: Seinfeld’s George finds serenity
now at the poker table,” Bluff, May, 2007, p. 42. Available online at http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazine/Jason-Alexander-Michael-Friedman-817.htm.

It's scary enough that these people have their private delusional moments. But that they feel perfectly free to share them with the public, with apparently no more concern for being deemed mentally ill than if they admitted to seeing yellow elephants dancing around them, says sad, alarming things about how unjudgmental our society is of whatever weird ideas people want to entertain.