Scientology Half-Cocked: Commenters of the Week!

by Tony Ortega

January 28, 2012

It’s been another blast of a week here at the underground bunker, where we keep an eye on all things Scientology related.

We started off the week by marveling at the “thrill” of Scientology fundraising in our regular weekend feature, Sunday Funnies.

On Monday, we collected a few dozen of the best Twitter reactions to Sunday night’s 2-minute Scientology commercial during the broadcast of American Idol. As you can imagine, most of them could be boiled down to, “WTF?”

The next day, we marked the 24th of January as the day in 1986 that L. Ron Hubbard chose to discard his meat body and go voyaging among the stars in search of the big floating needle in the sky. One church theory has him returned to Earth by now as a five year old. Seen any ginger kindergartners looking for a lost pack of Kools? Let us know.

Wednesday saw our big investigative piece of the week: we tracked down a retired LA Sheriff’s Office detective and a retired County Coroner investigator who had worked together on the 1985 death investigation of Scientology leader David Miscavige’s mother-in-law, Flo Barnett. For the first time, Bob Havercroft and Debrah Kitchings explained how they handled the extremely strange details of Flo’s demise by rifle.

On Thursday, we gave readers a sneak peek of next week’s new Skeptic magazine, which has a couple of lengthy pieces about Scientology by Jim Lippard and editor Michael Shermer.

Friday morning is the time we rejoin L. Ron Hubbard on the deck of the Apollo, circa 1968 to 1971, when he was running Scientology from the yacht while it sailed the Mediterranean. We had more excerpts from his daily crew dispatches.

And soon after, we posted another piece, this time showing Scientology’s latest attack on former church executive Marty Rathbun — a 9-minute video. We pointed out that church leader David Miscavige is still fighting over 2009 allegations of violence in Scientology, when the rest of us have moved on to the church’s extreme fundraising!

Whew. Another busy week. And do we have some doozies coming soon. But for now, let’s go to the awards!

Our Sunday Funnies featured yet another sorry-looking flier from the San Diego Org. We got a chuckle from this jab from Schockenawd…

I don’t live too far from the San Diego org. Even though I’m not a Scientologist, I do understand the importance of good filing, and I might be swayed to go help them file. But, I’m just not feeling it. Maybe if their flier had called it the Thrill of Filing.

Bob Peterson was one of many of us who were scratching our heads at a South Africa Org flier promoting the “thrill” of fundraising. ORLY?

The “Thrill” of fundraising?? I would rate that right up there
with how I feel about snowmobiling. And that means sitting in a snow-filled
ditch while being beaten with a stick.

We had a lot of fun gathering up Twitter reactions to the church’s Sunday night advertising during American Idol. There was plenty of derision from our own readers, and we enjoyed this post by Gina Smith…

When even American Idol viewers are laughing at your promotions you know it’s just time to give up and fade away quietly.

And we love it when readers educate us. A tip of the hat to John P.…

AdAge, the trade publication for the advertising industry, said in October that the base rate for a 30-second spot on American Idol was $502,000, and that could climb to $640,000 the closer you get to the competition’s final episode. A 2-minute spot, therefore, probably cost $2.5 million or even $3 million when you factor in the need to get prominent placement and the need to outbid people who already had rights to those slots.

(For advertising novices: given the popularity of the program, a lot of the commercial slots for American Idol were probably purchased by advertisers during the network “upfront” sales period last year. That’s where the network unveils the new shows for the season and advertisers make major package buys of hundreds of millions of dollars across a network’s entire schedule, to get the best price on the shows they want to be seen on. But even if an ad slot is purchased, someone can come along later and “outbid” you and take over your slot if they want to be on a particular program bad enough. So to get their ads onto the program, the Church of Scientology would have had to outbid the existing slot holders, probably by a goodly margin, in order to be able to buy such a premium slot with only a couple weeks notice.)

So on Tuesday, it was 26 years since L. Ron Hubbard left his body to continue his researches into even higher OT levels. Or so said David Miscavige to the crowd assembled at the Palladium in 1986, prompting this reply by JustCallMeMary…

That’s some Astounding Science Fiction.

Heh. Meanwhile, Hubbard used our comment section to announce his return, in this post by LRH v2…

I’m back, and this Miscavige, wow that boy has really goofed the floof.

And we just couldn’t stifle a laugh at this poke in the ribs by Ivy Mapother…

After watching the video, my only question is: Does David Miscavige still represent the Lollipop Guild or is the Sea Org thing a full-time gig? Either way, I can’t help myself. I want to look down and salute.

The reactions to our big investigative piece of the week — on Flo Barnett’s 1985 death — generated a lot of skepticism from readers about the official finding that Barnett killed herself with four shots from a rifle. But our interview with retired LA Sheriff’s detective Bob Havercroft also convinced some that he’d done a thorough job. There was this reaction from NCSP, for example…

Thanks, Tony. It’s great to have some new first-hand perspectives on the matter. I’m still not 100% convinced, but I am more inclined to believe the “official” version of events.

It’s not really that difficult to imagine someone being able to shoot themselves multiple times; the gun is a semiautomatic, so it’s not as if she would have had to reload in between shots, and if it happened very quickly, I can see how she might not have felt the effects of the chest shots enough to incapacitate her. Because of shock and adrenaline it can take a few seconds or even minutes for the body to feel the pain of a gunshot. It’s bizarre for sure, but there’s a Wikipedia article about “Multiple Gunshot Suicide” that has some links to medical lit on the subject.

Do I believe that the Church is indirectly culpable for her death by putting her under enormous and unnecessary stress during a difficult time? Absolutely. But I think it’s likely that that’s the extent of their involvement.

And we were also happy to see Dan Garvin weigh in (Dan’s a former longtime Sea Org member and all around smart guy)…

Doesn’t seem like a good murder for DM. If he was going to have somebody killed, there were people whose whose death would have been far more worth the risk of getting caught. The detective’s scenario is unusual but not implausible. She’d shot herself three times and found herself not only alive but conscious. She would have been in great pain. The extreme, but terminal, effort and pain of carrying out the final shot probably seemed worth it.

But on the other hand, we also completely understood those who were still unconvinced. We liked this statement by LocalSP1…

Having had a couple of broken ribs in my lifetime and also being an avid .22 rifle shooter, you’ll never convince me that she shot herself.

Our post Friday about the latest Squirrel Buster video about Marty Rathbun generated a lot of interesting responses. Every time we write about Rathbun, a lot of anger is unleashed by those who feel the former enforcer for Scientology hasn’t done enough to atone for his acts. We understand that, but we also enjoyed this response from skydog…

In criminal law, the difference between a victim and a defendant is usually just a matter of time. When a person travels from California to Texas to engage in a pattern of harassment against an individual, they should not be heard to complain when they are spit upon or sprayed with a garden hose. When “reporter” Jim Lynch trespasses upon private property, he should not be heard complain that that the property owner threatens bodily harm upon him. When that same “reporter” violates the personal space of an individual by reaching into their car, he should not be heard to complain when a car door is slammed on him. Justice is supposed to be blind, not stupid.

Tony, you are correct in your claim that this film has no intended audience other than David Miscavige. The loyal cool aide drinking ronbots cannot be trusted to watch this. Watching a bunch of overweight, unkempt middle age men and women parading around Texas in undersized tee shirts behaving like juvenile delinquents might cause even the most zealous to pause before donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to achieve a similar state of “enlightenment”. The rest of the world is simply flabbergasted that the “producers” of this dribble have nothing better to do with their time and that the government has less important things to do other than revoke the tax exempt status of this criminal organization.

And we’ll finish up by looking at what Jefferson Hawkins had to say on the matter. As I’ve said before, reading Jeff always makes me feel clearer on an issue…

Tony, I think you’re right that this was made, really, for an audience of one — David Miscavige. They won’t show it to Scientologists (as they don’t want to put any Scientologist’s attention on Marty), and any non-Scientologist can see it for what it is — a demented piece of cult crazy. Reminds me of the time we were preparing one of those picture books laying out what a “Suppressive Person” was and Miscavige had the illustrator make the face of the “SP” into a likeness of Pat Broeker. It was an inside joke, that is, for an audience of exactly one. You have to remember that Miscavige has the personality of a middle-school bully and the things that make him snigger are, frankly, crude, juvenile and heavy-handed.

An interesting contrast is to look at the interviews on the Anderson Cooper 360 program and the St. Petersburg Times videos, where people are talking about Miscavige’s propensity for abuse and violence, and compare that with the faceless, nameless “people” who are accusing Marty of violence. These supposed interviews are so obviously scripted and (badly) acted that they are laughable. Those who accuse Miscavige have real names and faces. Those who accuse Marty have no names and no faces. Sure, Marty has his own history, but at least he is man enough to own up to it, and to apologize to many of those (including myself) he abused, either verbally or physically. Miscavige will never own up to his much worse behavior, he will continue to hide in his office and snigger at his own childish video productions.

Well, another excellent week of reactions from our readers. It’s the thing that keeps us going. And this weekend, we’re on high alert for some pretty big news. So keep checking back often as we stay glued to the monitors here in the underground bunker!

Tony Ortega is the editor-in-chief of The Village Voice. Since 1995, he’s been writing about Scientology at several publications.

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