Book Review
Janet Reitman's 'Inside Scientology'
Jonny Jacobsen
infinitecomplacency.blogspot.com
July 3 2011
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Janet Reitman spent five years researching and writing Inside Scientology: it was worth the wait.
For years, journalists had been warned that the subject of Scientology was off-limits in interviews with Tom Cruise: then, suddenly, you couldn’t shut him up about it.
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much of that dark side is reflected in the founder’s writings, which remain scripture.
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He scolded actress Brooke Shields for taking medication to tackle her post-natal depression. He enjoined NBC newsman Matt Lauer not to be glib about psychiatric drugs. And generally, he acted like he had the answer to the world’s problems.[1]
It began with an “S”.
That Cruise’s proselytising did serious damage to his career is a matter of record.
Now it turns out that Reitman’s book, Inside Scientology, is another unintended consequence of his crusade.
For as Janet Reitman explains in the introduction to Inside Scientology, it was Cruise’s increasingly dogmatic promotion of the movement that first piqued her curiousity.
Mark up another one then, for Operation Foot Bullet.[2]
Reitman started her research in 2005, as Cruise’s evangelical phase was reaching its peak.
She published an extended feature on the movement in the March 2006 issue of Rolling Stone, then built on the contacts she made there to launch the book project.
She was the first journalist to speak to those subjected to the serial assaults by Scientology’s current leader David Miscavige.
She was chasing down the details of now-notorious incidents when they were just uncorroborated reports on the Internet.
So it must have been frustrating for her when details of the violence and abuse at the top of the movement burst out from obscure Internet message boards into the mainstream news media.
In June 2009 much of this material hit the headlines with the Florida-based St Petersburg Times’ investigative series, The Truth Rundown.[3]
Reitman gives due credit to the Times’ work, an invaluable resource to anyone interested in this aspect of the story – as she is scrupulous in citing her sources throughout the book.
But Inside Scientology has plenty more to offer.
Her book is the first to report in detail on some of the most egregious incidents in the movement’s recent history.
See Infinite Complacency Blog to read more . . .
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Inside Scientology, by Janet Reitman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011)
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