Join us on Monday, March 11, at 2pm ET/11am PT for a live video chat with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright. We'll be talking about his new book Going Clear, a hard-hitting look at the Church of Scientology.
Links: Goodreads's book page and author page. Lawrence Wright's website. Read an excerpt on Random House's site (scroll down a bit). Amazon's page. Michael Kinsley's delightful review.
No, no. Not Willard and Dreamy. I'm speaking of Paul Marrick and Greg Arnold.
I'm not sure, but I think Scientology's Prime Directive must be It's way too late to stop the spread of news, but it's never too late to punish the whistleblower!
Remember Debbie Cook? That ex-high official whose email of a month ago, ostensibly only to other true believers, leaked out right after the latest exposé of Scientology's fund-raising practices was published by Tobin and Childs? Well, this'll shock you: she's being sued, by guess who?, for talking out of church school after allegedly taking $50K to keep her lips zipped for the next billion years. Tony Ortega's post is a good place to start.
While over at Runnin' Scared, I noticed another item that's quite interesting: "The Decline and Fall of Scientology? Skeptic Magazine Makes the Case." Ortega got an advance copy; the rest of us will have to bookmark and wait a couple of weeks.
I've been a high-level member of Scientology for over 30 years and never stirred any trouble before, but now I will.
I hate the fundraising. Scientology already has over $1 billion that it is not spending.
I hate the expensive new empty buildings.
I hate that people who reached the magic level of "clear" are told they have to re-do it so the church can make money. They did this to me too and now I'm poor.
I hate that David Miscavige has taken total power over the church when it was supposed to be run by executive committees.
I hate that the executives supposed to be in charge are in a special Scientology jail just for them, where they also sent me for a while.
I want you to do something.
I want you to stop making donations (except for buying Scientology services).
I want you to forward this e-mail anonymously to every client of the Scientology corporation you know.
(Previously).
Oh, my.
She said the church is hoarding "well in excess of a billion dollars" in IAS donations, in violation of policies written by church founder L. Ron Hubbard. The money was supposed to be used to disseminate the religion, she said in the letter.
"Only a tiny fraction has ever been spent. ... Only the interest earned from the holdings (has) been used very sparingly to fund projects through grants."
The church did not respond Sunday to requests for comment.
Hard to get the story straight on a holiday, i'n't it?
Yep. It appears that another top-ranking Scientologist simply does not care for the Big Boss and his ways and has finally found the courage to say something.
[Debra J.] Cook said in her letter that the dominance of church leader David Miscavige as the sole source of power in Scientology violates a system of checks and balances put in place by Hubbard before he died in 1986. She said top church executives who could check his authority face "long and harsh" discipline programs and have been absent from their posts for years.
The above excerpts are from Thomas C. Tobin and Joe Childs. And that other valuable watchdog, Tony Ortega, is also all over it.
Says someone on the Why We Protest boards: 'This is going to be very enturbulative."
Love that word.
... just in case you wanted something a little different from the familiar, here is a squirrel doing a facepalm. You're welcome!
Especially you, David Miscavige!
(Swiped from Ecoconsultancy: "The 21 most horrific social media facepalms of 2011.")
My question WAS going to be: How many more stories like this have to be told until we have a proper investigation?
(alt. video link | alt. video link and transcript)
An investigation by people with subpoena power, I mean. There are some good journalists doing some digging. Props also to the determined watchdogs and, of course, to the ex-Scientologists who have found the courage to speak up.
Read a long blog post from last year by Valeska Paris Guider here (via). And here is one that I believe is written by her sister.
(Thanks for the hint, Michael Shermer)
Would you take out a billion-year lease on a used car from this man?
Speaking of scams, the latest article in Joe Childs and Tom Tobin's new investigative series, "The Money Machine," is now available. This is, of course, another long hard look at the "Chu®ch of" Scientology.
In addition to reading the article, I urge you to watch some of the videos that you'll see at the top of that article and on the series index page. They're pretty compelling, in a weird sort of way. They are interviews of people who have left the cult after spending astounding lengths of time doing mind-boggling things.
Photo credit: Robin Donina Serne for the St. Petersburg Times and tampabay.com (1998)
It never fails. Just when I'm reading some stuff about Scientologists and trying to keep open in my mind the thought that their critics aren't automatically unimpeachable, I happen upon yet another video in which Scientologists slam that door themselves. Here's an example, shot by Mark Bunker of XenuTV.com, described as follows.
7/2/99 - Three Scientologists surround me as [I] try to videotape an event on L. Ron Hubbard Way in Los Angles. This is a great example of what they call "Bullbaiting" as they try to provoke me and create an incident to get me arrested.
The first two minutes are boring -- just some cops trying to get Mark to leave. But then the going gets weird, and you know what that means.
Did you ever meet anyone you'd like to have a beer with less than those three guys? They're like eight-year-olds who watched a video titled "How To Be Boss of the Playground," and this was their virgin flight. (Of course, being Scientologists, they would have had to pay a lot of money for that video, but that's another story.)
I learned from Tony Ortega that Mark is currently at work on a new documentary about Scientology, called "Knowledge Report." There are a bunch of clips from the footage he's already shot up on his Vimeo channel.
It turns out there is an upside to the squirrel becoming a symbol of good luck this postseason: think about which group that's gonna piss off.
(?)
[Update] Also.
Lawrence Wright, whose lengthy New Yorker article on Paul Haggis and Scientology we noted yesterday, was interviewed on Fresh Air by Terry Gross today. The interview is about twenty minutes long, and there is a summary post at that link.
If you've read the entire article, there's not a whole lot of new information, although I found it interesting to hear him questioned about some of the aspects of the article. If you haven't read the article, listening to the interview may persuade you to, although it might be a bit of a spoiler for some -- I liked the way the article unfolded toward some of the points that are discussed right away in the interview.
(h/t: Substance McGravitas, in Comments under yesterday's post)
You may recall mention last month of a Lawrence Wright book and New Yorker article on Scientology, "to be 'told through the eyes of director and apostate Paul Haggis.'"
I don't know if he's found a book publisher yet, but at least the New Yorker piece is now available, and it looks like a detailed one.
I haven't had a chance to read it yet, so, note to self, etc. But I thought some of you might like to know right away.
(h/t: @johnmcquaid)
[Added] Follow-up post.
John Cook at Gawker says Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright is currently at work on a book about Scientology, to be "told through the eyes of director and apostate Paul Haggis."
(By "apostate," he means that Haggis rather famously renounced his decades-long cult membership in 2009.)
Cook goes on to say, in part:
The book, which doesn't have a publisher yet, will be called The Heretic of Hollywood: Paul Haggis vs.The Church of Scientology and will explore both founder L. Ron Hubbard's life and Haggis' personal investigation into [current Scientology head David] Miscavige's violence, the enslavement of "Sea Org" volunteers, and forced abortions for church workers, according to a catalog from Wright's agent Andrew Wylie [pdf] that was pointed out to us by a tipster. Full text of the catalog copy is below.
Wright has mentioned the project before in interviews, and indicated that it grew out of a New Yorker story that hasn't yet run.
So there's that to look forward to, too.
Ed. note: the phrase before the "[pdf]" bit in the blockquote is a link in the original, but it looks like an erroneous one as of this moment. Visit Cook's post to see if it has been fixed. The link is now fixed.
The NYT has a solid article, with some associated pictures and video, centered on a couple who left the Scientology organization after spending their whole lives up till then working their asses off for it. (Their parents were members, too, so that's how that were brought up.)
Hard to say where we should draw the line between respecting religious freedom and investigating what increasingly looks like a scam and an abusive, hyper-controlling cult. I mean, I know which way I lean viscerally, and I'm sure you know, too.
I guess I'll just leave it there, and let you read the article.
(h/t: Peter Daou, rt by @Johngcole)
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[Added] If you're wondering why my post title is in quotes, it's because that was the NYT's headline when I started composing this post. It is now "Defectors Say Church of Scientology Hides Abuse."
[Added2] Long-time Scientology watcher Tony Ortega has a good blog post on this NYT article.
... but how could I not pass this along? Yes …
Xenophon v. Xenu
… is Teh Awesome, whether it's a court case or a monster movie.
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[Added] One More And We're Calling It A Trend Department: …
TBogg, FTW: Noron vs. the Morans.
(The titling thing, I mean, not the subject.)
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[Update] In the Comments, precedence is claimed.
Tony Ortega has a copy of a long letter that Paul Haggis has "written to Scientology's current national spokesman, Tommy Davis, 'Crash' director Paul Haggis [explaining] why he is leaving Scientology after 35 years.
Yeah, that Tommy Davis.
Actually, it's probably more accurate to say that rather than having gone public, Haggis has been outed in some sense. His letter was not, it appears, an open letter, but was instead sent by Haggis to Davis, with copies to "a handful of people," one or more of which leaked. Obviously, one could suspect this was Haggis wanting the letter to be shared but wanting to retain some deniability, but whatever. I don't much care. I'm glad it's out there, and if you're interested in cults, you'll probably find it an interesting read, too.
If you've been following the St. Petersburg Times's series on Scientology described below, Part 3 is now available.
I have updated my original post, but I thought I'd ping your feed reader just in case.
[Added] There are several more sidebar-style articles now available, too. See the project page under the "Chapter 3" heading.
If you've read the articles on Scientology and/or watched the interviews with the former members who came forward that I linked to in the last post and had any doubt about them, I'll tell you this: listen to the response from Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis. There will be no more doubt.
Remember that Tom Cruise video that the Scientologists tried to suppress last year? This is way crazier than that. It's almost hard to believe it's real, it's so far over the top.