Given its rather unsavory reputation, the Church of Scientology usually has a hard time getting much love from politicians or other prominent personalities. For every glittering movie star that actually belongs to the wacky group, many, many more would never have anything to do with it.
But it’s those exceptions — big names that agree to shill for David Miscavige’s church — that tend to grab our attention.
In particular, the willingness of Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca to go to bat for Scientology has been something of a curiosity over the years. And just today, we were forwarded by one of our tipsters a rather surprising notice that Baca, this Sunday, will be helping out the church in an interesting way.
Big news for Scientology watchers: Alfred A. Knopf announced today that it will be releasing Lawrence Wright’s highly anticipated book about Scientology on January 17, which is a couple of months earlier than we had heard it would appear.
Jenna Miscavige Hill’s tell-all, meanwhile, appears to have been moved back to February, a month later than had previously been announced.
After the jump, we have the full press release from Knopf about Wright’s book.
Over at The Hairpin, on Monday “Stella Forstner” put up the second installment of her series on growing up in Scientology. This second chapter was about Scientology beliefs, and like the first, it’s very well written and smarter than your average church tell-all.
Forstner helps an outsider understand the appeal of auditing, and does her best to make the idea of tracking down traumas from your past lives in order to improve your current life sound like the most natural thing in the world.
But her real beef in this essay is that she wants the rest of us to lay off Xenu, already.
One of our tipsters forwarded to us an e-mail the Church of Scientology has sent out asking its members to consider sending their kids to a convention on the church’s private cruise ship, the Freewinds.
We immediately thought of the Freewinds experience of Ramana Dienes-Browning. Last year, we told her story of the hard sell she got as a 15-year-old when her mother took her for a visit to the ship. Ramana was hounded by Sea Org members until they broke down her objections and pressured her to sign the Sea Org’s billion-year contract.
On Sundays, we reveal the latest Scientology fundraising mailers that get sent to us during the week. And we have some good ones to show you this time. But first, we wondered if you had noticed, like we did, that Connor Cruise’s big action-movie debut is coming up!
Tom’s son appears in the remake of Red Dawn which opens on Thanksgiving. (Connor’s only other film credit was his appearance as Will Smith’s younger self in 2008’s Seven Pounds, which New York Times reviewer A.O. Scott called “Among the most transcendently…crazily awful motion pictures ever made.”) Take a gander at the Red Dawn trailer in all of its survivalist-porn goodness, and keep your eye out for Connor aiming a really big gun.
Gary Douglas has a bridge to total…something…to sell you
Our old Village Voice Media colleagues at the Houston Press asked us to help get the word out about their cover story this week, and we’re happy to oblige.
Press veteran Craig Malisow has a barnburner of a story about a 70-year-old man named Gary Douglas who is doing something of an L. Ron Hubbard impression while running “Access Consciousness,” which Malisow characterizes as a “Scientology knockoff.”
After reading Craig’s article, we had to agree that Access is pretty much a bizarre imitation of Hubbard. We also wondered why this doesn’t happen more often.
There’s a reason Scientology earned a reputation as one of the most litigious organizations on earth, and one that turns any court fight into a bruising slugfest.
People who have found themselves in litigation with the church often complain that Scientology plays dirty, and gets away with murder in America’s courts.
What’s unusual is not hearing that Scientology is up to its old tricks in a lawsuit currently going on in the Atlanta area that involves Scientology’s drug rehab program Narconon, but that the judge in that case has called out Scientologist executives in the case for reprehensible behavior.
Yes, that’s right: for once, a judge is calling a Scientologist’s lies what they are — lies.
We want to thank Robert Berrington, a South African reader, who sent us some rare documents — records of his own Scientology excommunication.
Berrington learned that at the end of last year he was “declared a suppressive person” by the church — in other words, he’d been kicked out, and all church members who want to remain in good standing will be forced to now “disconnect” from him or risk being declared themselves.
We have copies of Berrington’s “declare,” his responses to its charges, and also a letter from the church he recently received when he asked for a refund of money that he had on account for services that he cannot now use.
Given its rather unsavory reputation, the Church of Scientology usually has a hard time getting much love from politicians or other prominent personalities. For every glittering movie star that actually belongs to the wacky group, many, many more would never have anything to do with it.
