NEWS: Tom Battles Xenu, Blames The Media

CELEB: Tom Battles Xenu, Blames The Media

Parade.com previews a profile of a certain Tom Cruise, with the headline “I Can Create Who I Am”.

Contributing Editor Dotson Rader notes:

Around fiance Katie Holmes, Rader observes:

Of Holmes herself:

But the fun doesn't end there. There's an online Interactive Poll that readers can vote in, asking "Has Tom Cruise deserved the negative press he's received in the past year, or is all the attention unwarranted?" The options are that Tom has brought everything upon himself, or that it's all the media's fault.

Observant member of Celeb Worship (where celebrities are always treated with due respect), Zoom, observed a pattern in the voting. In particular he observed a distinct pattern of responses blaming the media for Tom's recent woes.

A little over 3 hours ago (ten minutes before 7pm, US east coast time), 78% blamed the media.

By not even ten past 7pm, the media-blamers were down to 65%, with 7684 respondents.

Two and a half hours later, more or less, out of 12720 respondents, the media-blamers were at 76%.

As time dragged on, the page was slow to load, and the number of respondents seemed to stall at 13246, with the 76% media-blamers unchanged.

A few minutes ago it was 14986 respondents, 77% blaming the media, and that didn't change when I just refreshed the page.

Note to Xenu: Don't fuck with Tom. He knows the history of psychiatry, after all.

Hat tip: Zoom

"Dazed, passive and vacant." It must be love!

Hail Xenu!!

I hate how people place these celebrities on some pedestal like they're Gods or people who know more and deserve to be heard more than the lowly pedestrians they "entertain".

Just because Tom is a celebrity doesn't mean he's a not a fucking nutcase with a seriously enflamed ego. This isn't the media, this is Tom losing his grip on reality.

The million year war is not yet complete!!

Who the eff is Xenu?

Thank you for the clarification. I was at risk of being confused for a short moment there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu

Youre right, I do blame the media, for making various celebrities' eccentricities something we expect to be privy to, and to accept such worthless information as entertainment. Our celebrity fixation is a symptom of the misplaced values of mainstream culture.

note: this isnt a bash on the article, its just my mini-rant about the media, which was inspired by the article.

A damn good space plane pilot.

No, it's really not, IMHO.

As people, in groups, we get fixated on and about other people. We pay attention, we observe, we discuss, we gossip.

What's changed is not the "values of mainstream culture", but technology. We can now observe, discuss and gossip about lots more people from much further away than we used to be able to.

And, really, this is a story about Scientology, which as an organisation that happens to tie itself closely to celebrities.

Hat tip? Awesome.


http://www.lermanet.com/scientologynews/sandiego-books031590.htm

This is a very similar scam the Clams have pulled. Public perception is pretty valuable to them. Which is why they do stupid shit like this.

I was talking to Arnie Lerma today, and he mentioned that he would try and talk to Mike Godwin, whom he knows, about making a statement excempting a CoS/Nazi comparison from Godwins' Law.

HAIL XENU

Xenu, king of the Hemorrhoidians:

The values changing or not really isnt the point, though I dont see how you could argue that values havent changed over the course of the past 25, 50, or 100 years. Just as an example, 1975, 1950, and 1900 were vastly different periods from one another.

I also agree that technology is one of the main forced behind mainstream culture. People are communicating more frequently, and longer distances.

My point was that, mainstream values places importance on stupid, trivial things. And celebrity worship, which plagues our media headlines, just illustrates this. The reason its so stupid is that, we actually put value in knowing this about tom cruise. Its such a huge waste of energy in resources, on both ends.

I think any amount of this is bad, so its not that it was less gossipy before(or whatever), it was just that there were physical limitations to communication that slowed it down, or stopped it completely.

Technology has just made 'celebrity gossip' a nationwide thing as opposed to being individual to each city. And because of this, I think its going to get worse and worse.


[Edited on Apr 11, 2006 9:06PM]

i'm interested in how you judge what a waste of time is for people other than yourself.

And it would depend on the celebrity in question. I could really give a shit about Tom Cruise if he wasn't promoting a culf that's responsible for the deaths of many and the ruined lives of many more*. But I would love to hear about the lives of talented and accomplished actors such as Christopher Lee or Adrian Brody.

* Which is kinda the subject here, so let's wrap up the derail.

Oh my god never mind, I didn't want to know. I think I just lost my faith in humanity. Anyone want to help me check the couch cushions?

Dove, I love you. I just thought I'd throw that out there.

*raises hand*

Found it.

Just as well as anyone else can make a judgement about what other people should/shouldnt do. If its necessary to point out that my opinion is just as valid but not more right than anyone elses, I will.

But I really dont get the problem, some kinds philosophy texts(as an example) make the exact same kind of judgements about how people should conduct themselves, Mill, or Plato for example. Yet people dont discount what they say because its just their own judgement.

ps, im not comparing myself with mill or plato, just that what Im doing is no different than what they did, except mine was very specific, Im not a philosophical genius, and no one really cares what I say.

[Edited on Apr 11, 2006 by wottan]

let me put it to you this way:

what are you doing on this website? couldn't you be helping with some beneficial research, or building a house, or writing a novel? and your pictures of you and your friends looks fun, but awfully wasteful. coming here to tell people what is a wasteful use of their time is pretty arrogant considering you're arguing the point on an internet message board . go do something productive if you're so concerned.

word.

and didn't even NEED propellers.

So you get mad at me for making a judgement about spending time on celebrities, and you respond with a judgement of my spending time on a message board?

I was never intending to imply that the only worthwhile things to do in the world are write books or build homes(or whatever) just that I personally find celebrity culture stupid and loathesome. Feel free to judge the things I do as worthless, I wont say you cant say that, though I might argue against it.

I put value in many different kinds of things, and in the end everyone decides what they think is important. But I dont think its impossible for someone to reach outside of theirself and make a statement about other people. I also see no problem in such judgements being attacked on their logic and plausibility.

Oi vey. Do you want me to paint in very large words how you've missed my pont completely?

I'm not saying "values haven't changed." I'm saying we've been a gossip-fixated species for as long as we've been forming social groupings.

Seriously, the point is not THAT fucking hard to grasp.

But that isn't the issue. You're talking about "mainstream culture" as some reified thing with causal status that is "prior" to human action.

Guess fucking what? MAINSTREAM CULTURE IS US. For better or worse, we're to blame.

We've been gossips for as long as we've been in groups and had language to gossip. Now we can gossip about more than Grunthoss from the neighbouring tribe and focus on Bragelina and TomKat as well.

Hell, I've just come back from having a coffee with a colleague and gossiping (bitching) about the boss.

You keep making this out to be a "values" thing, as though those values have been imposed upon us...

At least until you get to the next point, which at least is analytically clearer.

Well, OK then. I don't think it's our biggest problem as a species, but I can see that it concerns you.