RSSSue Me! Sue Me! Sue Me!
March 19th, 2006 | View Comments
Andrew Sullivan (among others) has been following the story behind Viacom’s decision to pull “Trapped in the Closet”, the episode of South Park that mocks, among others, Tom Cruise and Scientology.
Allegedly, Tom Cruise threatened to stop promoting Mission Impossible: 3 unless it was pulled, and I’m sure Scientology threatened to sue (more on that later).
A synopsis of the episode is available from Wikipedia. You could watch the entire episode at Hollywood Interrupted yesterday, but it no longer seems to be available.
Sullivan is pretty vocal about Viacom’s cowardice on this matter and recommends boycotting MI3 until the episode airs again. Given what I know about Scientology and its operations, I’d say that this sort of threat is completely consistent with its past behavior.
I’m not quite sure when I started reading about Scientology. I know that I have an intense academic interest in the psychology of group behavior, particularly social influence and persuasion, and studying cult behavior is definitely a part of that.
I was the TA for Intro to Social Psych for Fall 2005, which required me to give two lectures. I chose to give one of those lectures on social influence and cult behavior, and opted to use Scientology as a case study.
Scientology has developed a sort of benign public reputation as that wacky anti-psychiatry thing that celebrities do, but Scientology is a vicious, sue-happy organization that goes to extraordinary lengths to silence its critics with lengthy lawsuits and more direct harrassment and has treated many of its non-celebrity members extremely poorly. Some of its members have died under suspicious circumstances.
Scientology recruits aggressively through a wide variety of front organizations, which include drug rehab centers, education and curriculum providers, business training, you name it.
In my ideal world, Scientology would not exist. I really kind of consider it an embodiment of evil.
If you’re interested in learning more about the shady dealings of Scientology, these are the sources that I relied on for my lecture:
The Front, an indie Pittsburgh paper, did an issue featuring Scientology. Pittsburgh’s South Side happens to be home to a Scientology office.
Dave Touretzky (scroll to the bottom), a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, has had extensive dealings with the so-called Church of Scientology, and has had the pleasure of Scientologists picketing his office.
Operation Clambake is probably the most comprehensive anti-Scientology site on the Internet.
Yvonne posted this on March 19th, 2006 @ 12:09am in Miscellaneous, Psychology/Neuroscience | Permalink to "Sue Me! Sue Me! Sue Me!"
Discussion
No Comments
There are no comments yet. Be the first to leave one!
| Trackback |
And then keep track of the discussion by subscribing to this post's RSS feed.
