Having lived in Los Angeles for 7 years, I'd say Scientology is absolutely pervasive there. The important thing to remember is that the crazy, billion year service, financial drain, strict weirdness that most people experience as Scientology is NOT what celebrity members experience. It's almost like there's two churches...the celebrity version that sucks them in with wining, dining, and any assistance in the industry they can offer in exchange for use of their name, and then the "pleb" version that sucks people in by capitalizing on how shit they feel about their lives and offering hints of a promise that if they work hard enough with their auditing and basically become slaves, they might end up being the next Tom Cruise or Kirstie Alley. It's a sad manipulation that preys on the poor suckers struggling to find any in into the industry.
Honestly, I thought a lot of it was old news. The only thing really new to me was the name of the woman who Scientology had tried to match him with, and the details about how that went awry. Still, the Scientologists are doing their best to claim it's all completely outrageous.
I kind of feel (hope?) that this is the way a cult comes undone. You get a few powerful dissenters, people who had access to everything that was going on inside the organization, and it becomes an emperor's clothes scenario. I'm not sure why anyone would join Scientology in this day and age, just based on what you can find out about them when you Google. Of course, they've still got tons of money so they're not going anywhere, but they don't seem to be as powerful as they once were.
Reply With QuoteOriginally Posted by dragonfly_71
