Scientology never gives up. We have pointed this out to you countless times, and now more than ever we can demonstrate how true it is.
Sure, the press for Scientology is as miserable as ever, and we see plenty of signs that the organization is still shrinking, is having staffing problems, and is getting a good look from various government investigating agencies during what has turned out to be quite a long lull between Leah Remini’s season two and three.
Leah’s looming new set of episodes apparently begins with a special on Jehovah’s Witnesses on November 13, but if that should give Miscavige pause, he isn’t letting it slow him down.
We’re barely keeping up with all of his launches and premieres and events, so imagine how his put-upon followers must feel as they try to figure out which direction they need to do their latest bowing and scraping and writing of checks.
Tonight, specifically, they’ll all be expected to be glued to their televisions and other devices — or better yet, to be in attendance for watch parties — for the premiere of Scientology TV’s new fall “season” as Miscavige rolls out another set of propaganda programs to put on repeat 24 hours a day…
As you can see from sneak peeks of the upcoming new shows, it’s the same slick and frenetic stuff that Miscavige has paid top dollar for over the last decade or so, but from what we can tell, the public at large has no use for it.
DirecTV isn’t talking about how many people are tuning into Scientology TV, but there are still signs that it isn’t catching on as Miscavige might have hoped, despite the huge amounts of cash he’s pouring into it.
When we want to take a peek at what’s airing, we check in at Scientology.tv, where you can pretty easily scan the current schedule without having to actually, you know, watch any of it. Admittedly, Scientology.tv is only one way of many that viewers can tune into Miscavige’s hype, but we find it interesting that after an initial spike in viewership — purely out of curiosity after a huge and expensive advertising campaign — traffic to Scientology.tv pretty quickly settled back into a negligible stream…
That’s an Alexa graph, and it’s not a measure of direct traffic — it measures rank against other websites — but it does suggest pretty strongly what sort of neighborhood Dave’s enterprise is in. It’s showing a current ranking for Scientology.tv as the 217,043rd most visited website in the United States.
To give you some idea, the website you’re currently reading is around the 27,000th most visited, and that’s in the middle of a valley we’re experiencing between Leah Remini seasons and heavy competition from the lovely political reality show we’re living in. (Scientology.org, the church’s main website, is around 50,000th most visited, lagging well behind us.)
Still, Dave is doing his best to pretend that Scientology TV is a thing, and his latest brainstorm is to rope in some new shills, like he does at Ideal Org grand openings or those prominent science fiction writers who act as judges in his Writers of the Future contest.
In this case, we’re talking about Scientology TV’s new “Documentary Showcase” that will feature independent (read, “desperate”) filmmakers who can’t get their movies shown elsewhere.
The first documentary to be featured airs on Friday, and it’s a 2014 film about remarkable women titled The Empowerment Project, made by director Sarah Moshman.
Several days ago, we emailed Moshman to ask her why in the world she would want her movie shown on Scientology TV — is she a Scientologist?
She hasn’t responded, but as reader ISN showed last night in the comments, Moshman has appeared in a preview of her film specifically for Scientology, without using the word “Scientology” itself…
“You can watch it here on Documentary Showcase,” she says sunnily, and we hope she understands the notoriety that comes with being such a prominent shill for Miscavige. Maybe Leah Remini will fill her in on that at some point.
Sigh.
As we said, this is something of a moment for Miscavige. Not only is his TV network having its big new season premiere tonight, but this weekend was the biggest three-day shindig of the year, with the annual IAS hoopla going on in East Grinstead, England.
On Friday night, Miscavige appeared under the big tent they set up for this annual shitshow, and he droned through another two-hour stemwinder about what a great year it’s been before handing out new Freedom Medals. Saturday night, it was the Patron’s Ball, and Miscavige gave out gaudy new trophies to the whales — we’ll find out who took home the hardware in a new issue of Impact magazine that will show up in a few months. Some glimpses of the proceedings have been showing up already, but no sign yet whether Tom Cruise made the scene with his bigass medal, as he does some years.
We did find it interesting that a couple of brothers from the Mexico City Agami clan, Ari and Daniel, seen here with Hungarian actress, Timea Vojtilla, received Freedom Medals Friday night…
The Agami brothers run a Scientology-based education program in Mexico, Intelligens, but we can’t help wondering if reader Intergalactic Walrus is right that their selection had something to do with the Agami family building Tom Cruise’s new condo building in Clearwater.
Also this weekend, photos finally showed up at Scientology’s website of something that happened nearly a month ago in Germany.
For some time now, Miscavige has been doing what he can to keep his Ideal Org grand openings secret from outside observers. (We can’t help wondering if it has something to do with this coup scored by a few of our enterprising readers, who managed to stake out a spot to film Miscavige during the grand opening for the Atlanta Ideal Org in 2016.)
That secrecy has reached such a level, last month Miscavige held a grand opening in Stuttgart, Germany and not only successfully kept any word of it from leaking ahead of time, he didn’t even post any evidence of it for almost a month at the Scientology.org website, which is unprecedented.
But now we can see that it was a pretty standard opening, with Miscavige himself officiating, along with the usual local shills…
Actual Scientology caption: “MR. DAVID MISCAVIGE WITH (LEFT TO RIGHT): Alexander Petz, Human Rights Attorney; Dr. Elke Preusser-Franke, President of the Jewish Women’s Association of Germany; Mr. Samir El Midani, Advisor to the Stuttgart Interfaith Center; and Ms. Jirina Hlasivcova, youth drug education counselor, Center for Drug Prevention and Therapy.”
Scientology continues to shrink, but somehow its leader is getting taller, judging by this photograph — how do they find such short shills in a place like Stuttgart?
Miscavige may not be a tall man, but he sure has been busy, you have to give him that.
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Scientology’s celebrities and ‘Ideal Orgs’ — now with comments!
We’re building landing pages about two of David Miscavige’s favorite playthings, his celebrities and his ‘Ideal Orgs.’ We’re posting pages each day, and we’re hoping you’ll join in and help us gather as much information as we can about them, in order to build a record and maintain a watch as Scientology continues its inexorable decline — and yes, we finally have comments working on these new pages! Head on over and help us with links and photos and comments about all of your favorite celebrities and failing Ideal Orgs
Previously, we posted pages for celebrities Anne Archer, Beck Hansen, Catherine Bell, Chick Corea, Elisabeth Moss, Erika Christensen, Ethan Suplee, Giovanni Ribisi, Greta Van Susteren, Jenna Elfman, John Travolta, Juliette Lewis, Kelly Preston, Kirstie Alley, Laura Prepon, Marisol Nichols, Michael Peña, Nancy Cartwright, Tom Cruise Danny Masterson, Stanley Clarke, Edgar Winter, Alanna Masterson, Billy Sheehan, Judy Norton-Taylor, and Terry Jastrow. And for the Ideal Orgs of Portland, Oregon; Sydney, Australia; San Diego, California; Denver, Colorado; Nashville, Tennessee; Perth, Australia; Tokyo, Japan; Sacramento, California; Las Vegas, Nevada; Silicon Valley, California; Rome, Italy; Orlando, Florida; Moscow, Russia; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Seattle, Washington; Dallas, Texas; Melbourne, Australia; San Fernando Valley, California; Pasadena, California; Bogotá, Colombia; Budapest, Hungary; Phoenix, Arizona; London, England; Orange County, California; Atlanta, Georgia; and Auckland, New Zealand.
Today it’s Eddie Deezen and Miami, Florida!
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Bernie Headley has not seen his daughter Stephanie in 5,231 days.
Katrina Reyes has not seen her mother Yelena in 1,864 days
Brian Sheen has not seen his grandson Leo in 407 days.
Geoff Levin has not seen his son Collin and daughter Savannah in 295 days.
Clarissa Adams has not seen her parents Walter and Irmin Huber in 1,470 days.
Carol Nyburg has not seen her daughter Nancy in 2,244 days.
Jamie Sorrentini Lugli has not seen her father Irving in 3,018 days.
Quailynn McDaniel has not seen her brother Sean in 2,364 days.
Dylan Gill has not seen his father Russell in 10,930 days.
Mirriam Francis has not seen her brother Ben in 2,598 days.
Claudio and Renata Lugli have not seen their son Flavio in 2,858 days.
Sara Goldberg has not seen her daughter Ashley in 1,898 days.
Lori Hodgson has not seen her son Jeremy and daughter Jessica in 1,610 days.
Marie Bilheimer has not seen her mother June in 1,136 days.
Joe Reaiche has not seen his daughter Alanna Masterson in 5,225 days
Derek Bloch has not seen his father Darren in 2,365 days.
Cindy Plahuta has not seen her daughter Kara in 2,685 days.
Roger Weller has not seen his daughter Alyssa in 7,541 days.
Claire Headley has not seen her mother Gen in 2,660 days.
Ramana Dienes-Browning has not seen her mother Jancis in 1,016 days.
Mike Rinder has not seen his son Benjamin and daughter Taryn in 5,318 days.
Brian Sheen has not seen his daughter Spring in 1,424 days.
Skip Young has not seen his daughters Megan and Alexis in 1,827 days.
Mary Kahn has not seen her son Sammy in 1,698 days.
Lois Reisdorf has not seen her son Craig in 1,281 days.
Phil and Willie Jones have not seen their son Mike and daughter Emily in 1,786 days.
Mary Jane Sterne has not seen her daughter Samantha in 2,030 days.
Kate Bornstein has not seen her daughter Jessica in 13,139 days.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on October 8, 2018 at 07:00
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Our book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper, is on sale at Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook versions. We’ve posted photographs of Paulette and scenes from her life at a separate location. Reader Sookie put together a complete index. More information can also be found at the book’s dedicated page.
The Best of the Underground Bunker, 1995-2017 Just starting out here? We’ve picked out the most important stories we’ve covered here at the Undergound Bunker (2012-2017), The Village Voice (2008-2012), New Times Los Angeles (1999-2002) and the Phoenix New Times (1995-1999)
Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…
BLOGGING DIANETICS: We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of L.A. attorney and former church member Vance Woodward
UP THE BRIDGE: Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists
GETTING OUR ETHICS IN: Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice
SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING: Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts
Other links: Shelly Miscavige, ten years gone | The Lisa McPherson story told in real time | The Cathriona White stories | The Leah Remini ‘Knowledge Reports’ | Hear audio of a Scientology excommunication | Scientology’s little day care of horrors | Whatever happened to Steve Fishman? | Felony charges for Scientology’s drug rehab scam | Why Scientology digs bomb-proof vaults in the desert | PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill | The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ
Watch our short videos that explain Scientology’s controversies in three minutes or less…
Check your whale level at our dedicated page for status updates
Join us at the Underground Bunker’s Facebook discussion group for more frivolity.
Our non-Scientology stories: Robert Burnham Jr., the man who inscribed the universe | Notorious alt-right inspiration Kevin MacDonald and his theories about Jewish DNA | The selling of the “Phoenix Lights” | Astronomer Harlow Shapley‘s FBI file | Sex, spies, and local TV news
