Sunday, January 25, 2009

How To Kill A Career

Bijou Phillips, one of the lesser known celebrities associated with Scientology, gave an interview recently with Paper Magazine where it was demonstrated once again that most celebrity Scientologists are incapable of not offending the public at large. Commenting on psychiatry and psychiatric medicine (those favorite whipping children of Scientology), Phillips was quoted as saying, "Just buck up and get over it. Stop being such a f---king pansy." Now there is a compelling argument if I ever heard one.
It is not ordinarily in my nature to bash any particular religion - they all have their bashing points, but bashing is far from a constructive activity - but I am beginning to wonder if there is an actual Scientology plot to offend as many people as humanly possible. I'm not a huge fan of psychiatry and I do believe that there is an over-dependance on prescriptions in modern psychiatric medicine, but there are times when the shrink and the medicine are actually necessary or might really help. For these people whose only contribution to society at large is to smile for the cameras and whose only education - most of the time - comes from what they've learned on a film set, there seems to be an abundance of short-sighted arrogance.
I understand that the religion of Scientology is opposed to the practice of psychiatry. I get that and I don't really have a problem with it. Most religions have their own little things that they are against and people outside of the particular religion might not understand it. Most of them, however, do not routinely go out of their way to insult everyone who disagrees with them. Even worse, most of them do not send out the very people who were recruited for advertising purposes with instructions to blatantly piss off a significant percentage of the very people they are supposed to be trying to win over. There is a logic to this that is escaping me.
When Tom Cruise went on his little tirade a couple years ago, it damaged his career and the reputation of Scientology (not that Scientology had such a great reputation with most people anyway) and he is now back-pedalling as hard as he can to try to repair some of this damage. Bijou Phillips doesn't even have much of a career. Is it really wise for her to go racing down the same path that a Hollywood superstar is already repenting of?
The powers-that-be in Scientology love to draft celebrities to be their spokespeople. Maybe they should spend a little time teaching them some smart things to say before letting them lose on the general public.

2 comments:

  1. How frightening, but then, what do you expect from a group of spoiled, self-absorbed children who refuse to learn anything at all from the past mistakes in history?

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  2. If you ever figure out what scientology is, Rhea, feel free to drop me a line. I've visited their website and find their answers evasive at best...it reminds me of my sister's brief sojourn into mormonism and how those discipling her wouldn't answer certain questions. My understanding is that scientology teaches that through the power of positive thinking, taking their classes, donating money, watching Tom Cruise movies, you can eventually become god.

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