scientology & celebrities

Famous, like Kirstie Alley and Jenna Elfman!

Yeah, what exactly is the track record of Scientologists actually getting famous? I don't count Beck, because he only went back to the faith later in life. Do we just not know of them?

Romans just fed you to the lions iirc

umm the Romans fed Christians to the lions dude. (except that didn't actually happen, either. Not sure where you got the "Christians feeding ppl to lions" bit tbrr

oh wait nm I don't know why I thought u said otherwise my bad

I wonder what the deal was with Giovanni Ribisi and Cat Power, i.e. to what extent she got pulled into Scientology too when they were a couple. (She's always seemed somewhat psychologically unstable/ fragile, hence possibly susceptible to this kind of thing. Like other such religious/ cultic/ psycho-philosophical-lifestyle systems, maybe it even "helps" for a while. With addiction, etc.)

Don't Scientos usually mate-- pair up with-- each other? They may date outside the religion, but do they ever marry (or get into long-term relationships) with those outside it?

He's now married to Agyness Deyn and she's deflecting all the Sci questions people throw at her.

learned today that william s burroughs went clear in the 60s before being excommunicated for "treason"

didn't he and someone else (gysin maybe?) go around disrupting scientology meetings in london by playing back prerecorded tapes of some kind while in the audience? guessing that was post-treason. i remember in ed sanders revised-revised edition of his manson book (grain of salt) there being some totally O_o connections drawn between some of the family and the disappearance of numerous scientologists.

as someone mentioned above one of the most fascinating details to me was the fact that top-level scientologists, even now, still speak in '50s slang because thats what hubbard did.

how crazy is that. its just the best.

that's swell

He's now married to Agyness Deyn and she's deflecting all the Sci questions people throw at her.

― baked beings on toast (suzy), Saturday, February 8, 2014 3:16 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

i was just wondering whatever happened to her and now i know. speaking of scientology & celebrities, i caught maybe 10 min of "can't hardly wait" the other week and saw the part where jenna elfman is this beleaguered smoking angel who tells that blonde dude about some opportunity she missed and then i stopped watching, but it reminded me that all of these people are actors too. i wonder how much faking it they do when they're talking with the sea org muckity mucks.

I wonder what the deal was with Giovanni Ribisi and Cat Power, i.e. to what extent she got pulled into Scientology too when they were a couple. (She's always seemed somewhat psychologically unstable/ fragile, hence possibly susceptible to this kind of thing. Like other such religious/ cultic/ psycho-philosophical-lifestyle systems, maybe it even "helps" for a while. With addiction, etc.)

this is pretty trashy

Trashy on my part? I like Cat Power, and I'm hardly an emblem of mental health/ stability myself (on the contrary), kind of identify with that. Just extrapolating from the Ribisi relationship, which always seemed strange to me.

On the other hand, won't deny that I sometimes take an interest in trashy celebrity gossip. Guilty as charged.

Finished Going Clear. What a ride, eh?

every Christian denomination, even the Catholic church at this point, acknowledges that salvation is possible outside of its particular sect (except maybe not the JWs). comparing scientology to other faiths on an "eh, they all pull the same hokum" level is really simplistic thinking - all religions are interested in persuading their congregants to remain in the fold & to donate their money, no doubt. and all are interested in insisting on the veracity of their truth-claims. not all charge outright for access to higher levels of truth on a cash-for-truth basis, and almost none will actively make your life miserable if you speak out against them publicly. Catholics did this centuries ago, yes, in a very different way. the comparison is really, really surface-level though

― joe perry has been dead for years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, February 7, 2014 6:33 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

After finishing the book and reading his epilogue, I don't think he was being as, er, eccumenical? even-handed? as Shakey suggested. He seems to more be comparing and contrasting different "new" religious movements. He notes that some share specific elements with Scientology but he doesn't make any of them out to be an exact fit. You've got mormonism, which goes full-on legit/mainstream, drops some of its more unpopular practices (bigamy) and fields presidential candidates, and then you've also got Jim Jones and mass suicide. And then there's the Amish, who are very cloistered and easily shun but otherwise seem relatively harmless, and the Branch Davidians who he seems a little more uncertain about. I think he reasonably calls psychotherapy Scientology's more respectable cousin or something, but he doesn't imply that psychotherapy is "just as bad" as scientology as an institution, as opposed to as a philosophy.

Such a great book. And I agree it wasn't even handed--there's a bit of underlying astonishment overall. Then again, anyone that writes about Hubbard usually comes off that way.

Yeah, what exactly is the track record of Scientologists actually getting famous? I don't count Beck, because he only went back to the faith later in life. Do we just not know of them?

― DonkeyTeeth, Saturday, February 8, 2014 3:39 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they've gotten a few/several famous people when they were sorta kinda famous.

xp, sorry I didn't mean to suggest that Wright wasn't being "even-handed" in the sense of fairness. I think he's about as fair as a non-believing writer can be to them. I just meant that I didn't think the purpose of that epilogue was to say "See, all religions are like this at one time or another in their history."

ah ok. lol non-believing writer. Who believes Hubbard at all?

i just meant as opposed to a member of the church

Congratulations to Josh on completing his Clear Mitzvah!
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So many great moments in the book. I really love the fact check scene at the end where Tommy Davis is giving the most absurd justifications/denials but you feel like you're going down the rabbit hole with him, just trying to imagine what it must have been like to actually sit through hours of that, going over fact after fact with those giant binders, the dunkin donuts sign in the background, etc.

and then after all that there's like 2 lines mentioning how Davis blowed

I liked how the (earlier) New Yorker piece works in tandem with this. Iirc, it wasn't really an excerpt but really a expanded version of some parts of this, especially the St. Louis archives fact checking, with doctored photos and invented documents and the whole NYorker fact-checking process. Really one of the most damning things in here, again, is the so-called disputed Hubbard memoir, which Wright notes the church in the past submitted into evidence as a defense but now keeps a tight lid on, because 21st c. CoS clearly can't withstand the full batshit transparency.

It was pretty amazing when Davis tried to argue that someone other than Hubbard had added the stuff about homosexuality to his writings, and that's why it had been taken out. This is the only book I've read where an account of its own fact-checking process was included and was in itself riveting.

Just finished the Wright book tonight and basically everyone ^ otm. Hugely admire the people who were in deep but found the courage to blow and then speak out. Really does seem like scientology stands apart in its vindictiveness.

Apparently Louis Theroux is working on a scientology doc..

Finished Going Clear. What a ride, eh?
― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Monday, February 10, 2014 8:12 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you should start a thread: Hurting Went Clear. Now Ask Him About It.

Had anyone read his Amish book? tempted to check it out, after he mentioned it in the text.

Kind of want to read all of his books now.

we should start a thread for books that began as NYer articles/written by NYer writers

good idea

I really like the Dana Goodyear Anything That Moves exotic food/foodie book. There were several chapters of that that stemmed from her New Yorker writing.

David Remnick's Ali book is great

would really like to read his other non-fiction books. He was another NYer writer that always stood out to me well before he became editor

Y'all weren't kidding! I'm reading this book right now, it's great!

A conspicuous example of Dianetic processing involved John Brodie, the outstanding quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, who suffered an injury to his throwing arm in 1970 that threatened to end his career. Despite the best medical attention and physical therapy, his elbow remained sore and swollen. Finally, he went to Phil Spickler, a Scientologist and Dianetic auditor, who asked Brodie to tell him about previous incidents that might be keeping his arm from healing. Brodie related that he had been in a severe traffic accident in 1963, in which his arm had been broken. As he explored the incident with Spickler, Brodie seemed to recall one of the ambulance attendants saying, “Well, that poor sonofabitch will never throw a football again.” And yet Brodie was unconscious at the time. How could he have such a memory? Spickler told him this was all part of an engram that was keeping him from getting well. “The ambulance attendant’s prediction had been simmering in my unconscious for seven years, agitating all my deepest fears of declining ability or failure,” Brodie later writes. “It had finally surfaced as this psychosomatic ailment in my throwing arm. Phil made me tell the story again and again and again, until no charge showed on the E-Meter” (John Brodie and James D. Houston, Open Field, p. 166). The swelling on Brodie’s arm diminished. He went on to have one of the greatest seasons of his career, and was voted the National Football League’s most valuable player that year.

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Started the book this week, thanks to this thread. Something struck my memory. Didn't there used to be a searchable online database of people who had taken Scientology courses? I swear I've seen something like that on the internet in the last 5 years or so.

Oh nevermind, I was just thinking of this (list of known Sci-Tie celebs).

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/faq-you/celeb.txt

also lol at these youngs who are like "we are so going to fake-take scientology stress tests and then write about it" when they start to get calls and messages from the scientologists and then the calls never stop for the rest of their lives, wherever they move, no matter how many times they change their number

I accepted a free bible from some Mormons and it took me like a year to shake them.

the socialist party of north carolina didn't leave me alone for at least 3 years after i left the state
learned my lesson!

they'll probably find me again now!

This thread is deindexed. Your secret's safe with us.

i've taken scientology stress tests so many times on the streets of manhattan and they never asked for my phone #!

are you strssed?

well obvs

maybe thats why they didnt ask, they were like, yeesh, cant help this dude

he broke our tin cans

xp I think she meant people who publicly write about it. Scientology harasses its critics.