Thursday 30 September 2010

Online Scientologists out in force

I finally got round to watching (on the iPlayer) Panorama's follow up to the John Sweeney shouty investigation into scientology a couple of years back in which the reporter famously "lost it".

I was looking forward to "The Secrets of Scientology" but found it rather pedestrian with lots of "this is the man who will tell me the secrets", "the secrets will be told soon by this man" build up with lots of fuzzy walking shots and not much pay-off.

Whilst the programme was interesting and shocking (although depressingly not really as we all know what goes on) there was nothing really new in it but I suspect the reasons for this was lawyer-inspired! (Has Carter-Ruck ever been on the side of good? (apart from Mr C-R's deathbed conversion to Liberal Democracy of course (always makes by think Blackadder I's archbishop episode))

What amused me is the utter predictability of the online comments on reviews of the programme (examples in the Mirror and the Metro) from scientologists (some claiming to be and some not) that are so transparent. Why do they think that anyone would be fooled by comments randomly going into the personal history and smears of some participants, especially as the programme had just said this is exactly what they do!

Here's hoping for some Scientology-love to boost my google analytics! :)

3 comments:

Dave Licence said...

For me, the first half or more of the show was purely the reporter trying to vindicate himself for either what he felt he did wrong or what scientologists did to him the first time around.

Look! See! They made me do it! Here's a man to back me up!

Disappointing follow-up.

Anonymous said...

Yes...somewhat disappointing, thanks to Carter-Fuck. A shame, because it could have been an exploding episode. Just watch how gaunt the Mike Rinder guy looks in 2007 compared to now. There's a lot more to this than is shown in the documentary. Several dozen people online confirm that he was forced to crawl around on his knees for months, not being allowed to walk. And that's just one story out of hundreds.

This cult is very close to another waco/jonestown episode, but its bullying succesfully dissuades the press from looking into it and the feds from closing the whole sorry cult down.

Alas, thruth always prevails, eventually. We'll just have to wait a little bit longer for it in the particular case of the world's ubercult.

Anonymous said...

Comment on something important and political. I dare you to explain how the plan for university tuition fees is progressive.