"Paul Haggis vs. Scientology," Lawrence Wright

I don't have much use for religions. They encourage a way of thinking that elevates faith above questioning and rational inquiry. Where rational inquiry is of no help -- say, concerning what happens after death -- that's not a problem, but too often faith takes primacy even when rationality is critical, as with our species' response to overpopulation, for example.

But Scientology is appalling even as religions go.

Lawrence Wright's extended piece in The New Yorker is centered on Hollywood screenwriter and director Paul Haggis's departure from the church of Scientology. Haggis reflects on his multi-decade membership in the church and what led him to renounce it in 2009. Briefly, the final straw was the church's refusal to denounce California's Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in the state. Haggis felt the church's position was morally indefensible and personally offensive to him as the parent of two gay children. The church's recalcitrance led him to investigate how it was perceived by others, which in turn led to his discovery that church officials lied to outsiders about church practices. At that point, he felt he had to leave.

Wright uses Haggis's story as a framework into which to weave the stories of other ex-Scientologists, all of whom tell harrowing tales of escaping total domination by the organization. In some cases this domination included physical abuse at the hands of the church's current de facto leader, David Miscavige.

The church of Scientology denies the allegations of abuse and coercion lodged by its former members. Although the allegations inspire disgust, they are, unfortunately, not well supported by evidence that impresses the legal system: most of the cases against the church have been dismissed. Because of this, the church has been able to claim its accusers are untrustworthy and spiteful:

The church characterizes Scobee, Rinder, Rathbun, Hawkins, De Vocht, Hines, and other defectors I spoke with as “discredited individuals,” who were demoted for incompetence or expelled for corruption; the defectors’ accounts are consistent only because they have “banded together to advance and support each other’s false ‘stories.’ ”

A presumption of innocence is due to Scientology as much as to any person or organization named in a lawsuit. Nevertheless, the idea that these people would bother to conspire with one another is tough to swallow. The fact that so many people have accused Scientology of coercive, abusive behavior tells me that either

1. Scientology is good at recruiting vengeful, spiteful people who will band together to discredit it for no apparent reason (and waste a good deal of time, money, and emotional energy in the process); or
2. the accusers are right.

Wright pressed Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis on the church's attempt to discredit ex-members:

I asked how, if these people were so reprehensible, they had all arrived at such elevated positions in the church. “They weren’t like that when they were in those positions,” Davis responded. The defectors we were discussing had not only risen to positions of responsibility within the church; they had also ascended Scientology’s ladder of spiritual accomplishment. I suggested to Davis that Scientology didn’t seem to work if people at the highest levels of spiritual attainment were actually liars, adulterers, wife beaters, and embezzlers.

Scientology, Davis said, doesn’t pretend to be perfect, and it shouldn’t be judged on the misconduct of a few apostates.

That's one way to look at it. Or you could believe that the church's denials are sounding a little desperate.

It would help Scientology's credibility if the church could point to an ex-Scientologist whom it didn't have to vilify.

Let me rephrase that: it would lend Scientology its first scintilla of credibility if it could find such a person.

Don't hold your breath waiting.

If the deeply disturbing revelations of child molestation by Catholic priests have done nothing else, they have reminded us that the more religious organizations distort the normalcy of human lives, the more likely are terrible consequences. Scientology has its share of weird and unhealthful practices, and they're often directed at its adherents, not those who serve in a clerical role. For instance, in many cases the church demands its adherents cut themselves off from nonbelievers, including immediate family: the church claims too much contact with non-Scientologists will interfere with its adherents' quest to be better Scientologists.

Another example is the church's "Sea Org."

The Sea Org became the church’s equivalent of a religious order. The group now has six thousand members. They perform tasks such as counselling, maintaining the church’s vast property holdings, and publishing its official literature. Sea Org initiates—some of whom are children—sign contracts for up to a billion years of service. They get a small weekly stipend and receive free auditing and coursework. Sea Org members can marry, but they must agree not to raise children while in the organization.

It's bad enough that married couple cannot raise children in this group. Just leave that aside for a moment.

What is the possible justification for permitting a child to contract him- or herself to the church for what is effectively his or her entire life?

I can't imagine a child being handed over to act as clergy for any religion. And yet, this and other alleged (but sadly, credible) disturbing practices within Scientology will go on, unchallenged by Scientology's adherents, because they believe.

Wright elaborated on this point when he was interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. In the course of the interview Gross asked Wright about the "notice of separation" Hubbard received from the military upon his completion of service in World War II. The church of Scientology produced one version of the document. It stated Hubbard had been grievously wounded, a key fact because Hubbard claimed to have discovered the basis for Dianetics, and thus Scientology, while recovering from those injuries.

Wright received a different notice of separation from the U.S. military in response to his queries. That document makes no mention of the injuries Hubbard claimed.

The church claims Hubbard's official military record was sanitized because Hubbard was a covert intelligence officer, but its claim rests entirely on the analysis of an ex-intelligence officer who "worked as a consultant for Scientology" and who died in 2001.

It's hard to believe the church could magically gain access to Hubbard's supposedly secret, true military record if it had been sanitized by the intelligence community. Moreover, the church cannot explain why the notice of separation it produced wrongly claimed Hubbard had completed college with a degree. In short, its version of the document screams, "Forgery!"

From NPR's transcript of the interview:

GROSS: So, the document that you have, L. Ron Hubbard's notice of separation, what impact do you think that is going to have on Scientology?

Mr. WRIGHT: It's hard to measure, because we're dealing with a religion, and people are drawn to it because of faith. And if it were simply a matter of reason, then one could put this document down in front of you and say: Here is conclusive proof that the founder of Scientology lied about his military record and lied about his injuries and lied about the very fundamental principles out of which he created the Church of Scientology.

But that may not matter to people who are involved in it, who may feel that they are gaining something from their experience, either because they feel like the truths of Scientology enhance their lives or because the community of Scientologists that they live among is something like their family. So they intentionally shield themselves against knowing these kinds of things.

Faith trumps rational inquiry.

"The Riddle of Jimmy Carter," Nicholas Dawidoff

Rolling Stone has a lengthy piece on former president Jimmy Carter. (It's also available in a print-friendly format, but that version lacks any credit for Dawidoff. Odd.)

Modern presidents are fascinating creatures because it takes such uncommon determination to attain office, and even more uncommon skill to do well once there. Of course, "doing well" is in the eyes of the beholder, and Carter more than most presidents has suffered from a perception that he meant well but didn't do well in office.

I wasn't old enough to vote when Carter achieved the Oval Office. I was old enough to read, though, and I remember the many articles in that most populist (and admittedly, often fearmongering) of magazines, Readers Digest, that warned of the dangers that surrounded us. Nuclear war with the Soviet Union was a favorite topic, as was the energy crisis (it had expanded beyond the original "gas crisis" by then) due to inevitable fossil fuel depletion. There were even the first articles I remember about global warming. (Then there were the curious "I am Joe's [name of organ]" pieces -- but I digress.)

The adult world toward which my generation was hurtling seemed full of troubles that no one was addressing -- until Carter came along.

I was definitely in the minority in cheering the man when he tried to wean the country off fossil fuels. It was an ambitious goal, and one that would take decades, that much I knew. What I didn't know was that the American voter has no taste for self-abnegation or long-term thinking. Carter was booted out of office in a historic landslide for Reagan, and Carter's small but farsighted steps toward making an energy-independent future for ourselves were all but entirely undone by his successor (one of many reasons I have nothing but contempt for the whitewashing of Reagan's reputation by disingenuous or genuinely misinformed people).

Dawidoff's piece makes it clear that Jimmy Carter is still a riddle, even to longtime friends. He is full of demonstrable contradictions, and is not above reimagining and romanticizing his past like any other politician. This comes as an unwelcome surprise to those of us who believed that he was different from our other presidents in that he always told us the truth, no matter how much it hurt us (or him). As Dawidoff explains:

No one can become president without a tremendous aptitude for politics, and Carter has always been an enormously political man. Perhaps because his own faith and virtue have always been such vital political attributes, he just doesn't like us to think so.

Yet for a politician, Carter could be surprisingly tone-deaf. Perhaps that has to do with his conviction that the facts trump everything.

"He's an engineer," says Andrew Young, whose loyal support of Carter's political career led the new president to appoint him U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the first African-American to hold the job. "Engineers will tell you exactly how to build a bridge, but they can't seem to explain why you need this bridge."

All in all, this is a fascinating attempt to make sense of a man few understand, even today.

Nokia CEO's blunt assessment

Courtesy of Daring Fireball, an Engadget piece quoting Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's "brutally honest" memo to employees. It seems to be genuine and to have been leaked to Engadget and at least a couple of other media outlets. (Whether the leaks were intentional or not is unknown. Nokia might not be averse to outsiders seeing the memo: credit agencies are considering whether to downgrade the company's credit rating, and any sign the company is trying to turn itself around might help to forestall such a move.)

It's not often you see a company executive, much less the CEO, deliver such a forthright appraisal of his own firm. It helps, of course, that Elop was brought in as new blood because Nokia was already in trouble, so he can put much of the blame on actions and people who preceded his arrival.

Elop explained that Apple's iPhone dominated the high-end smartphone market, that Google's Android is "now winning the mid-range," and Chinese manufacturers are churning out competitive low-end phones that are "taking share from us in emerging markets." Nokia, meanwhile, has been unable to muster a challenge on any of these fronts: MeeGo, its high-end smartphone technology, has been a bust; Symbian, Nokia's OS for mid-range phones, is "non-competitive in leading markets like North America" and "an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements." And Elop made one of his harshest criticisms of his own company by quoting one of his own employees:

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, "the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation."

Ouch. It's one thing for the rank and file to grouse about corporate atherosclerosis. It's quite another for the CEO to do it.

I believe at least some of [Nokia's decline] has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

If I were a Nokia executive I'd be updating my resumé. It sounds like a housecleaning is on the way.

Speculation is that Nokia will announce it is adopting either Android or Windows Phone 7 at a media event the company has scheduled for 11 February.

David Kelley takes on Wonder Woman

Yes, it's that David E. Kelley, Mr. Ally McBeal, taking on Wonder Woman, the DC Universe superheroine, for NBC. Comics 101's Scott Tipton got a peek at the script for the pilot, apparently written by Kelley.

So is it as bad as you've heard?

Well, in the immortal words of Opus the Penguin, "It's not that bad, but, Lord, it ain't good."

Tipton's review of the script (the script, mind you, not the filmed pilot) makes the old series with Lynda Carter sound positively Shakespearean by comparison.

Halliburton fracking info, week 12

Halliburton's fracking Web site is unchanged, still listing just the original three formulations.

Hollow PR exercise. And getting more embarrassingly stale by the moment.

Enough with the cloud

So the car cassette deck is dead. Okay, I can see that. Nothing on cassette is unavailable in some digital format these days, aside from those mix tapes with painstakingly planned and executed segues I made a couple of decades ago for a road trip.

But why is the inevitable future for car entertainment the cloud?

“We went from radio to tape to optical and then to flash memory or a hard disc drive, and now we’re moving away from memory and to storage of our tunes in the cloud,” said Mike Kahn, director for mobile electronics of Sony Electronics.

One analyst posits we'll pay subscriptions or endure ads in return for cloud access.

Not me.

You assholes want us to go back to the days before we were allowed to own content, when the only way to listen to music in the car was to endure ads on the radio. You want us to surrender physical control of our preferred content and pay you for the privilege.

Screw that.

Screw you.

You content providers are forcing the cloud down our throats because you love charging us again and again and again and again and again for the same stuff. The cloud is a fraud. The promise of the cloud is a lie. And you are pigs.

I paid for it. It's my music.

I'll cheerfully pass on any car that forces me to use the godforsaken cloud, and I'll tell my family and friends to do the same.

Once again, screw that.

Screw you.

More on the HuffPo acquisition

Further to my thoughts on AOL acquiring the Huffington Post, Daily Beast contributor Randall Lane explores the deal's slightly odd terms:

AOL, even after its spinoff from Time Warner in 2009, remains a public company. So why did it pay almost completely in cash? (Just $15 million of the [$315 million] transaction is in stock.) Because while AOL clearly believes fully in The Huffington Post, Arianna and her squad just as clearly don't believe fully in AOL.

"AOL stock? Uh, no, we'd prefer compensation that will hold its value in five years, thanks."

Fellow Beast contributor Dan Lyons (aka Fake Steve Jobs) thinks the deal is "a slow-motion train wreck and will end in disaster." Not all his arguments are convincing but enough of them ring true that I'd be worried if I were an AOL shareholder.

Lyons portrays the match as salespeople meeting journalists. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong "is a sales guy," implicitly making HuffPo the journalists. One problem with thus romanticizing HuffPo's work is that HuffPo was routinely criticized for being a story aggregator, like Google News, rather than a content creator, like the New York Times. Story aggregation is to be strictly circumscribed at AOL: the leaked "AOL Way" slides (see my earlier entry) make clear that AOL is determined to keep all clicks in-house.

(Nothing wrong with story aggregators, by the way: I'm one myself, after all. However, I'm not charging you to read this.)

Lyons speculates -- whether his tongue is in his cheek, I don't know -- that the acquisition is part of a long-term strategy to consolidate outlets for ad dollars:

If the problem is that we have too many organizations chasing after the same ad dollars, why not roll everyone up and give advertisers fewer choices? Then we can bump the ad rates up. It worked in broadcast TV, when we had three big networks and they operated an oligopoly.

(Speaking of consolidation, the Daily Beast just merged with old-school newsmagazine Newsweek.)

The best tidbit to come out of Lyons' article is the probable reason HuffPo was available for acquisition:

Huffington and her partner Ken Lerer had raised $37 million in venture funding, much of it from Softbank Capital. In June 2009, as Softbank grew impatient for a return, the VC fund had installed Eric Hippeau, one of its partners, as CEO of Huffington Post. In our conversations, Hippeau talked about how he was determined to build a “strong and independent” business—which in the world of tech and media is code for, “We’re for sale.”

Hippeau, Lyons reports, is not joining AOL as part of the deal. 'Nuff said.

Lyons quotes Gawker's Nick Denton, pithily summing things up:

“AOL has gathered so many of our rivals— Huffington Post, Engadget, Techcrunch—in one place. The question: Is this a fearsome Internet conglomerate or simply a roach motel for once lively websites?”

Lane's and Lyons' pieces only strengthen my conviction that AOL just threw a pile of money down the drain -- again.