It’s that time of the week again, when we reveal the fliers and mailers and other items that our great tipsters have forwarded to us during the week.
Before we get into the glossy fundraising appeals that pour in each week, we have a stark reminder that as much as Scientology wants to give the impression that it’s expanding in leaps and bounds, the opposite is the truth. It’s dying. And week after week, there’s more evidence provided here and at Mike Rinder’s blog and at forums like WWP and ESMB that document the church’s inexorable slide.
We’ve heard about missions drying up and disappearing, for example. Over at ESMB, there was a lengthy discussion about the long decline of the mission in Tucson. And now, a tipster has sent us some photographic evidence that the mission is now dead…
Now, let’s get to those messages from the church itself, which desperately try to give the impression that this movement is not dying rapidly…
Hey, how do you make a few people in Los Angeles seem like a larger crowd? Count up their ‘completions’!
San Diego gets a rare treat! Greg Capazorio is not only Criminon’s president and a Freedom Medal winner, he’s married to Tom Cruise’s sister, Cass Mapother! Oh, this glamorous church.
Now you know why the crowd at the Sydney Ideal Org opening included people from New Zealand and other “ANZO” locations — they’re now under more pressure than ever to drain the wallets of every Scientologist in the hemisphere!
Barbecue and OT stories! Oh, now that sounds like a good time. And everyone will find amazing parking spots with their theta powers!
The only thing being “assaulted” at this shindig will be the bank accounts of the saps foolish enough to attend.
We’d like to hear from our New Zealand readers if this flier is as disturbing to them as it is to us.
ANDRUSCAVAGE!! Are you effing kidding us? There’s someone with an even more unlikely name than the leader of Scientology himself?
Oh, Canada. We think of you as our smarter, more savvy neighbor to the north. Images like this hit us hard.
Get ready, Sacramento. The rolling Holocaust-caused-by-psychs nightmare is coming your way.
“Find out if you qualify.” Yeah, that’s a good one.
Blackface. Brilliant, Miami. Brilliant.
The San Fernando Valley. First, what does it tell you that the Valley’s identity is represented by lane closures on the, what is that, the 405? And even sadder, as Mike Rinder pointed out on his blog the other day, fundraising for the Valley Ideal Org has been going on for nine years. How many times does Kirstie Alley or Nancy Cartwright need to throw some big party to get the Valley’s whales to pony up for this thing?
This guy wrote a big check for a new building Scientology doesn’t really need and that will sit empty and will eventually go under. But that makes him a ‘genius’!
Well, we’re seriously bummed out by this next item. We hadn’t seen a new Scotland newsletter in a while, and we were worried that the Mr. Magoo character who was writing them had blown or something. But even worse, his hilarious and over-the-top screeds have been replaced with this. We want to weep.
Surely you’d be happy to hand your money over to Peter Sokoloff, investment banker, knowing that he has the financial acumen to sink money into the Valley Ideal Org?
Once again, our thanks to our great tipsters. Keep those items coming in!
Special Note to Kim O’Brien
It was a rare treat when Kim O’Brien started showing up during our Village Voice days with some of the most cutting, wry, and guffaw-worthy comments that we had seen up to that time.
Three years later, we’re still reporting the news and having a whale of a time. But we sure could use some more Kim O’Brien zingers now and again. As to her observation that things aren’t changing fast enough for her taste, we couldn’t really imagine in 2011 that the IRS would be stirring, multiple feature-length movies by some of the biggest names in the business would be underway, or that lawsuits like the ones involving Monique Rathbun, Laura DeCrescenzo, or the Garcias would be causing so much legal fallout. Maybe it’s just us, but each of the last two years has been like nothing Scientology has ever experienced, and we love having a front row seat for what happens next. Check in once and a while, Kim. We could use the laughs.
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Posted by Tony Ortega on May 18, 2014 at 07:00
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.
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