KSW, baby, that's where it's at!
Thursday January 17, 2008
Categories: Culture, Religion (general)
(KSW = Scientologist jargon for "Keeping Scientology Working") Ay yi yi. If you thought yesterday's Tom Cruise Scientology freaknik video was wild, check out the Scientology pope's introduction of Cruise at a church award ceremony. That, and much much more....
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Here's the thing, though: what if Cruise were a Christian? What if in that video he were advocating not Scientology, but, oh, Episcopalianism with such monomaniacal fervor? I think it must be admitted -- OK, I must admit it -- that I wouldn't be quite as alarmed.
1. Of course. We're less alarmed by that which is plausible and coherent than by that which is absurd and incoherent.
2. Even so, "monomaniacal fervor" (which Cruise certainly displays in his weird video) is itself a disturbing trait -- a vice -- even if the underlying belief were true.
I don't see a Michael Jackson moment here. It's worth remembering that Michael Jackson has never made anything other than vapid pop music. Some of it may have been good vapid pop music, but it's not something that you can take seriously even if you like that sort of thing.
Tom Cruise, on the other hand, really is a good actor. Not quite Oscar-caliber, but nonetheless an actor that people can take seriously in serious films. Knowing that he's a kook in real life doesn't affect my enjoyment of his work, no more than Mel Gibson's bigotry or Sean Pean's political wackiness detracts from their films.
Or maybe I'm just very good at compartmentalizing . . .
Here's the thing, though: what if Cruise were a Christian? What if in that video he were advocating not Scientology, but, oh, Episcopalianism with such monomaniacal fervor?
Have you been following Kirk Cameron's latest gig as a professional Evangelist? I don't think any of the Tom Cruise/Scientology PR videos that have been flying around the web the last couple of days are any crazier than what gets aired daily on the Trinity Broadcasting Network or the 700 Club.
I don't know very much about Scientology and I haven't seen the Tom Cruise video (no desire, really). But if I DID want to know about Scientology, I would ask a Scientologist. And I still love Tom Cruise. He's a great actor. He's a great man. He stands up for what he believes in and I would love to have him as a neighbor. I doubt Scientology is as crazy as non-Scientologists like to make it out to be.
Eh, I think the attackin Brooke Shields for her depression was my MJ moment with Cruise. I can't watch him anymore. It's not that I universally refuse to watch an artist I disagree with vehemently (altho that comes up from time to time...) but I can't see a role anymore in a Cruise movie. All I see is him. And a bouncy, bouncy couch on the Oprah show. Ruins any movie he's in.
DeeAnn says, "I doubt Scientology is as crazy as non-Scientologists like to make it out to be."
Actually, DeeAnn, it's worse. There are aspects of Scientology that are very cultish, and many people who become involved end up leaving harmed. I don't care that much whether Cruise is a part of it or not - it's a free country, after all. But the so-called "Church of Scientology" is a pseudo-religion started for monetary reasons by L. Ron Hubbard. At best, it's complete garbage. But at its worse, people are manipulated and taken advantage of. If someone is genuinely helped by it, then that's fine, and I'm sure there are people like that. Maybe Cruise is one of them. But if people end up feeling controlled, and become part of something that they can't leave so easily, then it's not bad to point out the foolishness and harm that's wrapped up in the thing.
A late friend of mine saw all four of her children sucked willy-nilly (as it were) into Old Father Hubbard's cult, though I only discovered it quite recently, almost two decades after her death.
Shortly after college in 1987, I rented a room in Wilton, Connecticut, town of my high school. My landlady, 75 or so, was a veteran of the Manhattan literati of the 1940s; she and her husband wrote well and long for the Luce-era Fortune and Life respectively, and she numbered among her in-laws Dwight Macdonald, Robert Penn Warren, and Selden Rodman; her grandfather had been the Milton Friedman of the McKinley-end of the Gilded Age, whose name survives in the AEA's annual Oscar for fresh-faced economists. As we drained many a bottle and [discussed literary politics amid her oxygen tanks, she often warned me, ashen-faced, to "stay away from 'isms'!" Good advice, I thought in general terms.
Flash forward to late 2006, when a stray session at Google afforded me the Harveyesque "rest of the story" behind stricken admonition from my former life. Her two daughters, Rebecca and Maria (Luce's god-daughter) had in the 1960s found themselves converted to Scientology. Their father John sent their brother Nate to investigate.
Nate felt the magic, apparently, and became the third Jessup Scientologist. So the next rescue mission was assigned to the as-yet-innocent brother Amos.
Amos was inducted soon after into Ron Hubbard's private navy, sailing the coast of Africa. The crew had its share of brushes with Moroccan dictators, etc. Amos's girlfriend shot herself dead aboard ship.
You can read all about it at your local library.
[See Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard by Russell Miller, pp. 268-325.]
Little did I know in meeting the four adult children at the time of Eunice's Dixieland funeral that long-ago Wilton summer, amid the Jessups and Clarks and Warrens there assembled, and the bookfilled estate sale surrounding it, that she and her husband could have filmed their own variant on that afternoon soaper of the sleeping undead filmed nearby, Dark Shadows. I'd have warned any young freelancer in my midst off the temptation of any "isms", myself.
Pass me that bottle, Eunice.
I stopped going to see Cruise films a long time ago because of the Scientology thing. Unlike others, I can't compartmentalize.
I think Scientology is different from even the most rigid Christian fundamentalism in that fundamentalists don't try to destroy you if you criticize them, and in that (with a couple radical exceptions, like fundamentalist Mormon sects) you can leave. The problem with most Christian fundamentalist groups is that they *shun* you if you don't toe the line; that seems to be the opposite of what Scientology does.
DeeAnn,
Rent Battlefield Earth which stars another Scientology luminary, John Travolta, for a taste of Scientology-based fiction.
Our paper featured a local Scientologist a few years ago. She let on that you have to continually take coursework, which gets more and more expensive the further you get into it. When asked how it has helped her she responded that she can make traffic lights turn green so she never has to stop while driving.
That's some spiritual power!
Holy holograms, Scatman! Save yourself the fifty clams and th' trip to th' library: the whole book, Bare-Faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard by Russell Miller, is free online:
http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfmconte.htm
See:
16. Launching the Sea Org
http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfm16.htm
17. In Search of Past Lives
http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfm17.htm
The truth is out there, though digging up anything online related to mind-control is a bit Whack-a-Mole: as soon as one site comes down, another - Hey Presto! - pops up anon. Keep watching the skies!
Most religions have hierarchies, and levels of commitment. But there is a degree of transparency about joining most religions that is very uncultlike, whereas Scientology seems to thrive on secrecy. I vote "Cult."
(Yes, and most churches ask their members to make financial commitments. But, in my church at least, it's possible to attend every Sunday and learn all about the church without being a pledging member.)
Similarly, Rod, what would opinion be if Cruise were so passionate about Mormonism? There's a lot of people who consider Scientology to be pretty much Mormanism (minus 150 years).
Is it creepy because Cruise is jumping the shark (over and over), because Cruise is creepy, or because Scientology is creepy?
Hmmmm...Alicia's comment brings Gnosticism to mind. Orthodox Christianity in the first, second and third centuries had a message which was publicly available and known; Gnostic doctrines (as well as those of Greco-Roman mystery religions) were kept secret until one became an initiate of some sort.
>>
What if in that video he were advocating not Scientology, but, oh, Episcopalianism with such monomaniacal fervor?
>>>
I keep trying to put "Episcopalianism" with "monomaniacal fervor" and keep coming up short.
Don Altabello looks good, feels good, and is good. Don Altabello reformed the entire tax code by just charging into the Senate and demanding it.
Look good...feel good...be good.
These clowns are just begging for another South Park episode about them. Yes, Rod--way more retarded than Episcopalianism.
Rod: "Still, if he advocated for mainstream Christian belief with the same vapid intensity, I would find out which church he belonged to, and make a note to myself not to attend."
Perhaps now you can better understand why some liberal christians are put off by fundamentalist evangelical churches.
BTW - are you sure you meant to use the word vapid. I had to look it up and it doesn't seem to fit.
American Heritage Dictionary
vap·id (vāp'ĭd, vā'pĭd) Pronunciation Key adj.
Lacking liveliness, animation, or interest; dull: vapid conversation.
Lacking taste, zest, or flavor; flat: vapid beer.
"way more retarded than Episcopalianism." Now that's saying something. Zoom Zoom Zoom...
>Don Altabello reformed the entire tax code by just charging into the Senate and demanding it.
Sounds a lot like Will Ferrell's/John Goodman's/Alec Baldwin's/&c sales man-colleague "Bill Brasky" recalled admiringly when plastered, barside [insert oversized choppers, and rouge cheeks *in loco rosacea*]:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Brasky
"I once saw him scissor-kick Angela Lansbury."
"He hated Mexicans! And he was half-Mexican! ...And he hated irony!"
"The character of Johnny Appleseed was based on Brasky... except for the part about planting apple trees... and not raping men."
"He drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls."
"He orchestrated the merger between UNICEF and Smith & Wesson."
"Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky went hunting? Brasky decides he's going to hunt down all four of the Banana Splits. He stalks and kills every one of them with a machete. They all begged for their lives...except Fleegle."
"We once had a bachelor party for Brasky. He ate the entire cake before we could tell him there was a stripper in it."
"If you drop a phonograph needle on Brasky's nipple, it plays the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds."
"He killed Wolfman Jack with a trident."
Then in passing, anticlimactically:
"He sleeps eight hours a night! Well, he was pretty normal when it came to that."
All together, glasses raised, half-blind and wholly shotfaced:
"TO BILL BRASKY!!!"
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6471918896964887366
You see, I'm Mormon and I hear a LOT of crazy things that I'm "supposed" to believe. And yet I don't and it's not taught at church, much less believed by the members. Yet people who have never set foot in an LDS church keep trying to tell me what I believe. It really can be incredible at times.
So, I take a lot of this talk on Scientology from you guys with a grain of salt. Some people are screwed up before joining a church. Just because they are screwed up after leaving doesn't necessarily mean the church did it.
And I don't get this fascination with making fun of other faiths. If you don't believe it or like it, don't go. Don't become a member. As long as they aren't doing anything illegal, what's it to you? There obviously is SOMETHING good in the organization, otherwise no one would stick around. Maybe, just maybe, we close our eyes to what is good by trying so hard to find the bad.
I'm just sayin'...
In the long run, the smart money is on the Scientologists. Fortunately I will be long dead before that happens.
John E. said, "I keep trying to put "Episcopalianism" with "monomaniacal fervor" and keep coming up short."
I'm so glad you said this first! I keep thinking of some former Episcopalians I know who are Catholic now, and "monomaniacal fervor" is so *not* quite quite, what?
(And I think the word Rod may have been looking for was "vacuous" instead of "vapid," unless he was being ironic.)
>>>>
I'm so glad you said this first! I keep thinking of some former Episcopalians I know who are Catholic now, and "monomaniacal fervor" is so *not* quite quite, what?
Posted by: Erin Manning | January 17, 2008 8:22 PM
>>>
Absolutely - the funny thing is that I can imagine some sort of monomaniacal fervor associated with almost all other denominations:
Catholic - sure
Orthodox - yeah, especially after reading this blog for a while (just kidding Rod - well sorta just kidding, anyway)
Baptist - oh yeah
Unitarian Universalism - even them, have known a few
Methodist - tougher, but back in the day they were supposed to be pretty intense
But Episcopalianism - just don't see it. Remember the parents of the groom in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? I bet they were Episcopalians.
The Kirk Cameroon comparison is dead on. Go watch way of the master and then flip back to Crusie. Spoooky.
Scientology has a long history of criminal activity, intimidation of critics and tries to ruin the lives of people who leave the church (they are dubbed SPs, or suppressive persons, and according to LRH, have no rights as human beings).
They've even killed people. Check out the wikipedia entry on Lisa McPherson.
The thing with Scientology that always gets me is that its the first religion I've encountered where deeper "secrets" of the religion are available to those who can fork over more money. In other words, you could be the most devoted Scientologist there was, but if you don't have that $$, no more knowledge for you.
It's a breathtakingly pragmatic/straightforward approach to keeping the money coming in, though :-)
Rod:
Much as I hate to wish evil on a particular person ... for the evil Tom Cruise STANDS FOR, I truly cannot tell you how much it warms my heart that you have been so ridiculing him (or, more accurately, letting him ridicule himself) in recent days.
Kirk Cameron immediately came to mind as well.
Re my earlier spoof above of the Bill Brasky sketches:
I recalled Brasky's mythic exploits in reading the biographical note appended to a column at WorldNetDaily by the right-wing explorer Dr. Jack Wheeler:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59402
"He predicted the collapse of the former Soviet Union, 10 years before it came about – and explained exactly how it would take place."
"Wheeler once defeated Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in arm wrestling - and Putin's KGB bodyguard."
"He served in six conflicts against communist guerrillas, sky-dived at the North Pole, discovered three unknown tribes and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Southern California, where he lectured on Aristotelian ethics."
"The Washington Post called Wheeler a 'right-wing Indiana Jones.'"
"He is widely credited with inspiring the 'Reagan Doctrine,' which called for U.S. support of freedom fighters."
"TO JACK WHEELER!!!"
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