The End of the Magic World's 50-Year Grudge

[dalton99a]

7. +1. Geller is an asshole

James Randi, a Canadian magician and escape artist, known professionally as the Amazing Randi, went much further. A relative unknown at the time, Mr. Randi, who eventually won a MacArthur Fellowship as a professional skeptic, was the loudest anti-Geller voice in the world.

“He is intending to enter the ‘psychic healing’ field soon, and when he starts into that racket he can kill people,” he wrote in an edition of his book “The Truth About Uri Geller.” He also called Mr. Geller a “dangerous and insidious figure,” one he intended to stop “at all costs.”

Those costs, it turned out, were high. Mr. Geller filed defamation lawsuits against Mr. Randi, including one for claiming that Mr. Geller was performing tricks once taught on the back of cereal boxes. The so-called cornflakes case ended with a dismissal, but over the years Mr. Randi burned through most of his $272,000 MacArthur grant covering personal legal expenses. He died three years ago and apparently loathed his nemesis to the end. He once asked that someone throw his cremated ashes into Mr. Geller’s eyes, an obituary in The Economist stated.