Cruise: Does Scientology need a new pitchman?

"Mom! Tom Cruise is scaring people again!” said Neely Tucker in The Washington Post. Just as we’d recovered from the spectacle of Cruise ranting against psychiatric drugs on the Today show, or jumping on Oprah Winfrey’s couch to declare his love for Katie Holmes, a nine-minute video of Cruise promoting the Church of Scientology hits the Internet. Between bursts of maniacal laughter and karate chops for emphasis, a “barely blinking” Cruise explains how Scientologists are incapable of driving past a traffic accident because “you know you’re the only one who can really help.” He speaks wistfully of a world free of “SPs” (Suppressive Persons), and he alerts his co-religionists that “Being a Scientologist, people are turning to you, and you better know it!” I found it all quite fascinating, but “now I can’t sleep without the light on.”

It’s also getting harder to watch this guy’s movies, said Jonathan Kay in the Toronto National Post. The “next time I see him on the big screen, I doubt I’ll be able to think about anything other than that disturbing cackle.” The irony is that L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology’s founder, thought that by recruiting celebrities the church could speed up its transition from wacky sci-fi cult to mainstream religion. “In Cruise, though, I’m wondering whether the celebrity strategy hasn’t backfired.” The same can be asked about the church’s clumsy attempt to suppress this video, said Mathew Ingram in the Toronto Globe and Mail. As soon as the video hit the Internet, the church unleashed a salvo of threats to sue, with the predictable effect of vastly inflaming public curiosity. The Scientologists may be, as Cruise claims, the “authorities on the mind,” but they sure don’t seem terribly media-savvy.

It’s almost too easy to make fun of Scientology, said Roger Coombs in the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Yes, we chuckle when we hear Cruise describe Scientology “as the panacea for all the world’s ills.” We guffaw at his assertion that “if you’re a Scientologist, you see things the way they are, you see it in all its glory.” But wait—aren’t these boasts awfully similar to claims that many religions make? At least Scientologists admit their faith was invented by a man, Hubbard—which strikes me as a bit more plausible than, say, the notion that an all-knowing eternal deity handed down His commandments on two stone tablets. So before you accuse Cruise of having descended into madness, ask yourself this: If he had made a similar “video-diatribe” on behalf of Christianity or Islam, “would it seem so outrageous?”

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