Damn, they got Bart!
First, something I read in the New York Times:
In his book ‘Charlatan’, about a quack called John R. Brinkley, the writer Pope Brock describes early-20th-century America’s endlessly credulous populace, with “the average citizen as guileless as the wide-mouthed shad.” Brinkley and his virility scheme tapped into the nation’s penchant for mumbo-jumbo and hence into opportunities for salesmanship that had been previously unknown.
What happened was this:
In 1917 the charlatan John R. Brinkley experienced what was truly a seminal moment. This so-called doctor, whose diploma had come from a medical school that was “vague, obliging and long defunct” and whose expertise was dubious at best, was consulting with a 46-year-old Kansas farmer named Bill Stittsworth, who complained about a lack of energy.
Supposedly at his patient’s urging, Brinkley agreed to try to restore the man’s virility via an unorthodox transplant operation. The farmer wound up with two extra testicles courtesy of one luckless goat.
As Brinkley’s authorised biography has it:
“Dimly he had begun to realize that he was gifted beyond the run of doctors,” Brinkley’s adoring authorized biography would one day explain. [...] with this lovable characteristic of genius, he realised that money is not an aim, or an end in itself, but a means of enlarging the central idea of his life-work.”
I’ve ordered the book and can’t wait to read it. Still, Brock may be right to claim that in the early 20th century there were these “opportunities for salesmanship that had been previously unknown” but it sure as Hell didn’t end there.
Enter the Scientologists…
We know they already have Tom Cruise. In all honesty though, they are welcome to the little twerp. Anyone who’s have to sit through his ‘Oprah’s Ugly Couch Hysterics’ (OUCH) won’t shed a tear for this demented cocktail shaker.
Of course, as if the OUCH affair wasn’t bad enough, there was this taped interview – yes, that one. With wonderful lines like:
“Being a scientologist, you look as someone, and you know absolutely that you can help them. When you drive past an accident, it’s not like anyone else; as you drive past, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you’re the only one that can really help.”
So, whatever is still left of his flea-sized brain, the Scientologists are quite welcome to wash, wipe, warp or whip as much of it as they like.
However, they are most definitely not welcome to fuck with real people – or icons. Like the world’s most popular Boy Wonder. No, not Batty’s sidekick Robin – who cares about that paedophile’s wet dream – but our belovéd Bart…:
Longtime Scientologist Nancy Cartwright — best known as the voice of Bart Simpson — last year gave the church $10 million to help spread the word of founder L. Ron Hubbard into other galaxies.
It was all part of Scientology’s Global Salvage effort, which aims to “de-aberrate” Earth — meaning to rid mankind of psychology ills and other “aberrant” behavior.
Surprisingly, Nancy, 50, forked over twice as much as the Scientology’s most prominent member, Tom Cruise, who only gave $5 million in an installment plan.
It’s a sad, sad world we live in, my friends and nothing is sacred anymore. Though there might still be a glimmer of hope…
I mean, if you can brainwash idiot actors and turn cult cartoon characters into creepy cult crazies, surely it should be possible to retrain certain animals as well? Like convincing your average lion that a Scientologist tastes as good or even better than a Christian…?
Well, anyway, here’s to hope!
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