$cientology...

[Iva]

LRon did believe he was going to live forever, that he had found the secrets. Also, not really good at planning ahead in general. I'm only through the parts of the book that are the biography of LRon, but he is fascinatingly crazy.

I think he's had a couple of psychotic episodes. One of the first being that episode where he ran away to cuba. I think that in his later years, his paranoia was way worse because he was actually pursued by the IRS and he probably didn't think much past his own problems.

There's an interesting article at the Ortega site. Apparently Miscavige let his dad die and told the PI that was tailing him not to call 911 even though the guy was having a heart attack
http://tonyortega.org/2015/04/09/jen...s-astonishing/

[vanessa]

Going Clear (the book) is riveting; I cannot put down the crazy. Highly recommend it for anybody wanting to gawk at the trainwreck.

[isadora]

I watched the doc last night and thought it didn't cover anything new for me so it was a little dull, particularly the first hour.

That said, any time Tom Cruise talks in Sciencno lingo? I'm riveted! And some things were more shocking when said out loud somehow, particularly how the clams set about to destroy poor Tom and Nicole's marriage! That's really scandalous to me! The way they set about turning any tears into full-on cracks and turning Tom against her. And then training her children to see her as a suppressive! UGH SO SAD. Poor Nic!

The thing that struck me as Tom Cruise being an entitled asshole is that the Sea Org does tons of manual labor for Tom. That's disgusting to me. Though I'm sure he gives millions to that stupid cult so he probably sees it as a fair trade.

The amount of time and the psychological degradation the top tier staff endured in "the hole" was sort of glazed over in favor of the weird musical chairs game being given a long sequence. ALSO, they never mentioned Miscavige's wife, which is one of the most disturbing stories about this whole thing.

[roly]

The amount of time and the psychological degradation the top tier staff endured in "the hole" was sort of glazed over in favor of the weird musical chairs game being given a long sequence.

Agreed. A lot of the stuff about the higher ups who defected between 2005-2010 was kind of disjointed; as if they glossed over and/or rushed through things in order to make it seem like events happened in a very linear fashion (i.e., like everyone quit one after the other in quick succession, when that clearly wasn't the case). I hate when Docs do stuff like that to make reality seem more cinematic; just tell the story as it happened!

ALSO, they never mentioned Miscavige's wife, which is one of the most disturbing stories about this whole thing.

That bothered me, too. How can you do a whole two hours and not mention the fact that his wife just fucking vanished?! Especially since, if I recall correctly, that's what prompted Leah Remini to finally leave. For all of the focus on Miscavige, they really didn't get into who he is, except as it related to his friendship with TC, his cray-cray power trips and his apparent habit of beating the crap out of his underlings.

Overall, the stuff about LRH was the most interesting to me, because I only knew bits and pieces of it. It definitely made me want to read the book, so that's next on the agenda if I every manage to finish stupid, boring GoT.

[BreezyK]

Ugh, roly, GOT is not worth it, especially if you already are through Storm of Swords. The final two are garbage.

[roly]

I'm 85% through the fifth book, according to my Kindle; I wasn't going to read the last two but then I was on a plane for 16 hours and it just sort of happened. So now I feel like I need to finish the damn thing.

[vanessa]

The book mentions her disappearance, but only briefly. I think there's very little information about it; the people who know have not quit, so this author doesn't have the deets yet.

[vanessa]

PAMBIC to say that now that I am this-close to done with the book, I am sad at the lack of Katie Holmes dirt. There are brief mentions, but nothing truly good. There's another book called "Inside Scientology" that I think I'm going to read; supposed to be better-written (this one had a lot of good stuff in it, but the writing was pretty bad).

[ophy]

According to The Star, Tom is thinking about leaving Scientology . . .

http://defamer.gawker.com/report-tom...ium=socialflow

According to a report citing Star magazine, Tom Cruise may be considering leaving the Church of Scientology, of which he has been the most visible devotee for many years. The actor’s alleged crisis of faith comes, apparently, after a phone call with his daughter Suri.

“Tom has been under tremendous pressure where Suri and Katie are concerned because the church doesn’t want him close to them. They can’t stand that their own poster boy isn’t raising his child in the church,” this person said.

“If they label Suri a suppressive person (a Scientology term for an enemy of the church), as they’ve been known to do with dissenters, that would make it hard for Tom to have a relationship with her. He’s between a rock and a hard place, but he’s finally making a choice to put his daughter first.”

Sounds unlikely, but as one of the commenters pointed out:

NattyClipArtBig Fan
7/04/15 12:24pm
They were right on Bruce Jenner’s sex transition — in 1989. They broke John Edwards’s affair with Rielle. Why can’t they be first on Cruise’s Dianetic departure?

It sounds like something that might be coming from KH's people. Maybe this is their way of pressuring him for something else. Or, now that the public has turned against the Scienos in such a major way, perhaps some of that is sinking into Tom's brain and his people are 'soft launching' a way for him to leave the church that doesn't entail him admitting that it was all a crock. If he leaves for his daughter's sake, that's a lot more sympathetic than if he leaves because he's yet another rat jumping off a sinking ship.


That article led me to this other one in Gawker, which I had never read before. It's by Carmen Llywelyn, Jason Lee's ex-wife, who left Scientology many years ago:

http://gawker.com/why-i-left-scientology-1703997050


All of it is great 'how I got tricked into it, why I left, how they ruined my career and stalked me afterwards' stuff, but I particularly like this bit about Jenna Elfman:

Shortly after I left Scientology, I ran into one of my former faux-friends, Jenna Elfman, at Fred Segal in L.A. She walked up to me and said “Hi” and stared in my face for a second in a semi-confrontational way. I was shocked for a second but said hello, how are you, thinking it was going to be a normal conversation. But rather than telling me how she was, she went on a rant about all the courses she was working on and finishing in Scientology to let me know that nothing other than religion mattered. She didn’t ask me how I was. She didn’t wish me well or ask me about my life. She wasn’t interested. I was just supposed to listen to her while she lectured me in that tone-40 type of voice and told me I needed to get back on “the bridge.” Then she walked off without saying goodbye. It was a very cold encounter. (Honestly, even when I was a Scientologist, I thought the Elfmans—Jenna and her husband, Bodhi, who married me and Jason—were cheesy people. They sent out a monthly newsletter in the mail to everyone they knew called “The Elfman Empire” listing all their Hollywood projects and Scientology work they were doing. It was funny.) Anyway, Jenna thought she was being a good Scientologist by talking to me that way. Of course, they’re trained to act like that.

#TheElfmanEmpire

And Jason is such an asshole!

Jason’s disconnection letter was delivered to my mailbox the same day as Gay’s. It was also a paragraph, and it also ended in the same meaningless way and insinuated the same serious things. I actually questioned who wrote his letter because it mimicked Gay’s in every way. It practically said the same thing. It was silly that he had to write me a polite letter to tell me never to speak to him again. In my mind a more honest dialogue would have gone like this: “Yeah, Carmen, I know I knew you better than anyone else, especially Gay. And I guess I loved you for almost ten years but you’ve done the unforgivable deed of reading a book that my ass-backwards religion doesn’t like so I’m going to have to turn you into a more demonic version of yourself where you can never be redeemed or believed. Your pain is a lie. Just suffer in silence.” This would have at least been a more open conversation to have had with Jason. I might have respected him for at least telling the truth.

YOUR PAIN IS A LIE.


But the freakiest thing they did to her after she left was this:

I got followed all the time. People in public would loudly discuss a conversation I had just had in private, word for word.

If someone followed me around, repeating my private conversations to me word-for-word, I'd go absolutely bonkers.

I also checked to see if Beth Riesgraf (Parker from Leverage! who Jason got engaged to after he divorced Carmen, and who is the mother of Pilot Inspektor) also got out of Scientology when she and Jason broke up, and can't find out if she did.

You can look up stuff about individual clams here, btw (although the most recent stuff is from 2006, I think):

http://www.truthaboutscientology.com...-riesgraf.html

http://www.truthaboutscientology.com...jason-lee.html

http://www.truthaboutscientology.com...n-dohring.html

[LaaLaa]

I didn't know Parker from Leverage was his new clam ex!

If Tom were leaving $cieno, his adult clam children would for sure have to give him up, right?

[vanessa]

They won't let him leave; there's going to be some intense pressure on him to stay; it's just too important to Miscavage.

[Laura]

If Tom were leaving $cieno, his adult clam children would for sure have to give him up, right?

That's what I was thinking.

[NeoMaxy]

Jason Lee being a sciento makes me sad.

I still say it's bullshit because why isn't Jenna E. a big star? She and her weird accent can suck it.

[isadora]

Tom won't leave $cientology! They got too much on him, just like with Travolta. At most he'll back away for awhile like he did when he and Nicole got married.

I still feel sad about Tom and Nic! LOL. Those clams set about to destroy their marriage and did.

[dada_teacher]

I still feel sad about Tom and Nic! LOL. Those clams set about to destroy their marriage and did.

It's weird but so do I. I think they really did like each other? And the divorce was very clam related.