Oh, Perez. You look fabulous after all that weight loss. But you just have no reading comprehension, apparently.
We say that because we’ve just watched Perez mangle the Leah Remini story out of all recognition, and the thing is, he’s obviously getting nearly every one of his “facts” from stories we published earlier this week.
Perez, for some reason, is trying to turn the story of Leah Remini leaving Scientology into some kind of dishy tale of gay panic.
And while it may be hopeless to try and counter his misunderstandings before they circle the globe a few times, we’ll do our best to try.
In his new video, posted his evening, Perez asks, “Did gay drama result in Leah Remini being kicked out of the Church of Scientology?”
Well, no, at least not in the way that Perez implies.
The first thing Perez gets wrong is that he says Nicole Remini, Leah’s sister, called into a radio show this week and accused Tom Cruise of having some kind of gay relationship with Scientology’s leader, David Miscavige.
Actually, Perez, if you roll back the tape on that radio show, Nicole actually said the opposite.
It was the radio show’s host who said there were rumors about a gay relationship between the two (something no serious researcher of Scientology that we know of has ever taken seriously), and when she asks Nicole about it, here is her answer:
“No. I will say this, David Miscavige has a love for women, and that’s part of the reason why Leah was questioning things.”
Did you get that, Perez? It was Miscavige’s frisky behavior with his female assistant that got Leah’s dander up, and led her to ask out loud why Miscavige’s wife Shelly wasn’t at the 2006 wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
The next thing Perez gets wrong comes from our interview with Nicole we published Thursday morning. After Leah witnessed a number of things at the wedding that concerned her — the lack of Shelly, Miscavige’s friskiness with his assistant, and other things — she called her friend Melinda Brownstone in Los Angeles.
Melinda was so disgusted by what she heard, she helped Leah write up a lengthy “Knowledge Report” to submit as a formal complaint about Miscavige and the others. Nicole tells us this was done fully with Leah’s approval. Leah wanted the report to be written and submitted, Melinda just made it happen faster. (Perez wrongly accuses Melinda of blabbing as if she were turning Leah in. Didn’t happen, at least not in this case.)
Leah did have concerns about Tom Cruise — but Nicole says this was more about the way Tom seemed to be taking over Scientology with the help of Miscavige. They do have a close relationship, but as we’ve written before, what makes it strange is the way Tom is so in awe of David Miscavige.
Over the next few years, Leah’s complaints were about Shelly, the treatment of Sea Org employees, “disconnection,” and other issues raised by Debbie Cook, Nicole and our other sources tell us.
And we don’t know where Perez is getting the idea that Leah was “kicked out” of Scientology. Nicole and none of our other sources has ever said anything of the kind. Until the last moment, church officials were trying to “handle” Leah’s complaints, urging her to stay in the church. She left entirely on her own, and was not kicked out.
As for Perez’s wish that some kind of gay angle were part of the story, we’ve already explained that there is one: Leah was the only Scientologist who backed up Paul Haggis’s fight with Tommy Davis over Scientology’s homophobia. Haggis has two lesbian daughters, and he was especially offended when he learned that the church — or at least one local org — supported California’s Proposition 8.
Leah contacted Haggis by e-mail to show her support for his daughters, and got into a screaming match with Davis at her house because he refused to acknowledge that the church had supported Proposition 8.
Got that, Perez? Hey, next time you try to wrap your head around this story, how about giving us a call? We’re happy to do the reporting for you. It is, after all, a great story. So next time, get it right!
Meanwhile… X Factor singer Stacy Francis keeps doing her thing. We managed to catch this tweet before she erased it…
Stacy Francis (@stacyfrancis) tweeted at 6:52 PM on Sat, Jul 20, 2013:
@_Lindsay__ @mrcdesigner @kirstiealley I am not ashamed of what I said! Nicole is
THAT ARTICLE IS FULL O LIES! THAT IS THE TRUTH TOO!
(We think she’s referring to the article at Mike Rinder’s blog.)
Such language…
——————–
Posted by Tony Ortega on July 20, 2013 at 19:20
E-mail your tips and story ideas to tonyo94@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter. We post behind-the-scenes updates at our Facebook author page. Here at the Bunker we try to have a post up every morning at 7 AM Eastern (Noon GMT), and on some days we post an afternoon story at around 2 PM. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.
If you’d like to help support The Underground Bunker, please e-mail our webmaster Scott Pilutik at BunkerFund@tonyortega.org
