Lewis is a gung-ho Hubbard enthusiast, and helps run a Valley [...]]]>

We can only hope that Michael Lewis — Operating Thetan Level Eight and Homo Novis Übermensch — will see fit to cancel his appearance at a scheduled “Admin Scale Workshop” that is scheduled for Scientologists at the Advanced Org Los Angeles tonight at 6 pm.

Lewis is a gung-ho Hubbard enthusiast, and helps run a Valley mission. But we’re feeling very sympathetic for what he’s gone through this week after his son, Sons of Anarchy actor Johnny Lewis, apparently ran amok, killed his landlady, and ripped apart her cat. The 28-year-old then leapt or fell off his landlady’s roof and the impact killed him.

As we pointed out yesterday, Johnny was born into Scientology, and his parents are both OT 8’s — which means they each spent about $300,000 to $400,000 over many years in order to reach Scientology’s highest level of spiritual attainment, and reportedly gained such abilities as clairvoyance, imperviousness to disease, and the skill to leave their bodies and affect simple matter.

Unfortunately, they were unable to prevent their son’s slide into drug abuse and/or madness. But they wouldn’t be the only parents who were helpless to stop a child’s deterioration.

We feel for the Lewis family. (Honest, we really do.) And we can only hope that Scientology will let him off the hook for his scheduled event tonight. Will our LA tipsters let us know whether Michael gets the night off?

Seriously, someone give the guy the night off. He’s been through enough.

Links

— Dana Kennedy examines the relationship between Tom Cruise and Scientology leader David Miscavige in a great new piece for The Hollywood Reporter. We only wish she’d included what John Brousseau — someone who watched the two men up close — told us about their lopsided dynamic: “Tom Cruise worships David Miscavige like a god,” he said.

— McAlester News-Capital reporter Jeanne LeFlore stays on the Narconon Arrowhead story with news of two more lawsuits which are expected to be filed by the families of patients who were found dead at Scientology’s flagship drug rehab center.

(Our thanks to our great tipsters, who continue to send us Scientology’s mailers and come-ons. Tomorrow, we’ll have plenty more as Sunday Funnies makes its return!)

UPDATE: Thank you, Simi, for calling and learning that Michael has the night off. That is as it should be.

Johnny v. Luka: Who’s nuttier?

As far as we could tell, however, Magnotta’s actual involvement with Scientology was [...]]]>

Johnny v. Luka: Who’s nuttier?

As far as we could tell, however, Magnotta’s actual involvement with Scientology was either exceedingly tenuous or nonexistent.

That isn’t the case with Johnny Lewis. The Sons of Anarchy actor was a second-generation Scientologist, the child of prominent church members of the highest order (they’re OT8’s), and he also had extensive involvement with Scientology’s troubled drug rehab program, Narconon.

And as for his suspected crimes, he’s giving Magnotta — who carved up a friend on camera and mailed his body parts to different recipients — a pretty good run for his money.

You’ve probably heard some of the particulars. Lewis, 28, is suspected of brutally killing his 81-year-old landlady and also ripping apart her house cat. He then either accidentally fell or purposefully jumped off a roof and ended up dead of the fall. Drug use is, not surprisingly, suspected.

Scientology researchers have been working overtime to dive through Lewis’s past, and they’ve come up with all sorts of interesting things.

— Marc Headley pointed out that Lewis was a frequent participant in Scientology’s internal films: “When I worked at Golden Era Productions, we shot many projects with Johnny. He was the star of the Film TR-5 – Why TR’s.”

— Johnny’s father, Michael Lewis, is an OT 8 with a 30-year history of Scientology course completions. And so is his mother, Divona.

— Johnny was becoming increasingly unhinged this year, as his criminal history shows. But he also had a history of involvement with Narconon, appearing at a 2004 event to promote the drug rehab program, saying that his mother had used its teachings to keep him off drugs. Narconon has been much in the news lately after three deaths occurred in nine months at its flagship facility in Oklahoma, the last in July. Multiple local and state agencies are investigating the center. We’ve reported that Narconon uses deception to lure in unsuspecting patients who think they’re going to get drug counseling but instead get Scientology training. The connection to Lewis is only going to make things even tougher for Narconon at a moment that it’s already under intense scrutiny. Is it any surprise that the church is scrubbing its websites of any mention of Lewis as fast as it can?

— Karen de la Carriere pointed out that Sons of Anarchy‘s top producer is John Linson, who is not a Scientologist, but Linson’s sister, Jenny Linson, is very much a well known church member. She provided some of the most entertaining theater on the final night of Anderson Cooper’s 2010 four-part series on Scientology, which featured the wives of defected church executives.

And that has us wondering, with Jenny’s brother running the show, and Johnny Lewis on the cast, are there any other church members on Sons of Anarchy? Here’s the cast list. We’re too lazy to check it, but we figure our eagle-eyed fellow Scientology Watchers can scan it and tell us what they think in the comments!