CRUISEing for a Bruising

"The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others." Dalai Lama

These days, I have to tell you, I just want to haul off and pop Tom Cruise right in the chops. Wipe that supercilious, self-congratulatory grin off his face. Put him in touch with his flaming inner imbecile.

I was appalled when Cruise ragged on Brooke Shields for discussing psychiatry and antidepressants as treatment for postpartum depression. I was shocked--but not surprised--when he won an Arrogant Contest with Matt Lauer on the same subject. Having now read the transcript of his Entertainment Weekly EW.com interview, where he used Nazis to support his moronic and dangerous rationale, I really want to clean his clock.

Here's the part of the interview that set me off. (The bracketed rebuttal is supplied by EW.)

EW: Scientology textbooks sometimes refer to psychiatry as a ''Nazi science''...
TC: Well, look at the history. Jung was an editor for the Nazi papers during World War II. [According to Aryeh Maidenbaum, the director of the New York Center for Jungian Studies, this is not true.] Look at the experimentation the Nazis did with electric shock and drugging. Look at the drug methadone. That was originally called Adolophine. It was named after Adolf Hitler... [According to the Dictionary of Drugs and Medications, among other sources, this is an urban legend.]

Salon.com is doing a fascinating series on the Church of Scientology, including Cruise's role in its recent heightened profile.

While on the surface, Cruise's rants against psychiatry and behavior modification drugs in favor of vitamins, exercise and peer counseling might make it appear to some that Scientology is a benign version of holistic science -- nothing could be farther from the truth. The Scientology shtick is so bizarre it's hard to imagine anyone with any real intelligence taking it seriously.

The most cursory review of Scientology's rites, rituals, charts, personal "audits" and "auditors" reveals a blatant pandering to those who seek not so much spiritual growth and enlightenment as a Jenny Craig-like lifestyle commitment and transformation. There are books, tapes, CD's, progress graphs, courses, even jewelry--all for sale--and everything is a la carte. Among the life improvement courses like Personal Values and Integrity and How to Improve Your Marriage, you'll also find The Dynamics of Money and Financial Success. Oookay. A spiritual guide to getting rich. How Hollywood can you get?

The allegorical elements of Scientology go beyond Hollywood, and are frankly creepy. It's creation story takes place 75 million years ago, in a galaxy far, far away, where the warlord Xenu annihilated a bunch of alien civilizations, brought all the bodies to Earth and set off a volcanic chain reaction to send their "thetans" (souls) into the atmosphere. These thetans live in the bodies of all human beings, must be found in specific body parts and summoned out.

Well. Quite a departure from "And God Said, Let There Be Light." And not exactly in line with the Big Bang.

But wait, there's more. Scientologists are also taught that their personal flaws are the result of zillions of traumatic experiences over trillions of years of reincarnation. As they move up the various levels of faith--for which, by the way, the cost also increases--they hope to reach OT, or Operating Thetan status, thisclose to Scientology nirvana. It's where they achieve freedom from their mortal bodies and learn the ultimate secrets of the "cosmology" developed by the church's founder, science fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard.

A Scientology bigwig explains, "In the OTs, you're finding out that you're a thetan, that you've come into bodies before. Part of what you're trying to learn is exteriorization -- how to get out of your body. You also learn that you carry a lot of encumbrances from past lives."

Hmm. I'd say in a past life Tom Cruise was the village idiot.

Cruise has certainly been making a jerk of himself lately, but that's nothing new in the movie star Cosmology, and he obviously doesn't care. I wonder though if he realizes just how much of an ass he's making of Scientology in the process.

That's fine with me. The more this bogus religion is exposed and debunked, the less successful proselytizing movie stars will be in gaining converts.

Religion can be a touchy subject. And a treacherous weapon in the wrong hands. Especially those of someone who believes we've all been invaded by aliens. Though I'll admit, based on the recent behavior of Tom Cruise, that concept makes perfect sense.