Vanity Fair & Scientology Brouhaha Over Tom Cruise Girlfriend Auditions
Vanity Fair has reported on how the Church of Scientology had apparently conducted auditions to find a girlfriend for their poster-boy member, Tom Cruise. Scientologists and Cruise’s legal representatives have now vehemently denied the claims, calling them “tired old lies” and “hogwash”.
What’s particularly interesting is that the claims just don’t seem all that remarkable, compared to many other well-documented incidents involving the Church of Scientology and Tom Cruise. This doesn’t seem to quite qualify as “scandalous”, though it’s being reported upon as if it were. The fact that Cruise or his associates might “audition” or interview candidates for dating isn’t all that unusual — probably many celebrities have staff and friends that might help them with matchmaking to some degree. The more outrageous details involving the Scientology vetting process go on to talk about some women being asked/required to submit to Scientologist counseling/analysis processes for behavioral development, or candidates being dropped as dating partners because of having told someone the secret of being involved with Cruise.
Still, not all that scandalous.
It’s a bit mystifying as to why Cruise and Scientology are all that sensitive about this subject.
What’s funny, though is that their loud denials about the issue have probably resulted in far greater amounts of coverage than otherwise. This is probably a case where attempting to fight against the claims is actually resulting in a much larger news media feeding frenzy.
2 Comments
I disagree that this is not scandalous. This woman (and it is inferred that it was known by Cruise) was basically sent to a re-education camp for 2 months and discarded by Cruise. He basically used her like a prostitute and then had the organization do his dirty work for him. The punishment was brutal. One might say, why did she allow it? Well it’s a pretty horrendous mind manipulation cult and I couldn’t possibly explain how that happens, in the minute detail necessary, in this short comment section.
The details behind the scenes on this thing are quite gross and only the tip of the iceberg was covered in this story.
It’s scandalous because this organization raises millions and millions of dollars from its members who would NEVER give that money if they were told that some it was going to go to finding Tom Cruise a wife. Please! A pretty penny was spent on that venture.
Tom Cruise is the the de facto face of Scientology. He probably spends more time investigating the films he produces or any or things he would put his name and reputation to than he did this cult. He needs to open his eyes to the horrendous and criminal things this cult does and has for decades.
He spews lies. This is a dangerous and vicious cult. Tom Cruise got on national and international TV espousing the virtues of the organization, pointed his finger that Matt Lauer just didn’t get it, set himself up as some sort of authority while all the while, just like he tried to empty out that hotel so he could eat in peace by himself, he was using the church staff to pimp his vehicles and other things too numerous to mention here. Google.
What he did to this woman, Nazanin, was disgusting. Yes, I know it’s Hollywood and the media and fans have become jaded to bad behavior but, to the people who know her, it’s not in the least bit inconsequential or funny and it was all done in secret and full of lies.
Either Cruise plays the bad boy and just goes for it and lives the life of a cad, admitting it all the way or he stops acting all pious that he has all the solutions when in fact, his best friend, David Miscavige is a sociopath and he keep relationships together presumable because he is a jerk.
He needs to get honest and straight.
Yet, the woman willingly submitted to the process, did she not? And, you can’t imagine that she did it purely motivated by love, can you? She may have had to spend some time, but she did so as an investment in order to have a chance to date a celebrity who’s highly successful, rich and attractive…
So, it’s hard for me to consider her to be lily-white in this whole scenario. Women of greater integrity (and higher ideals) would’ve surely walked away from these requirements.
And, if you’re a high-level celeb, you have to be somewhat vigilant to avoid potentially parasitic hangers-on who just want to get as much out of you as they can for selfish motivations. So, it’s not all that weird to have a vetting process, even if we don’t personally believe in the Church of Scientology’s methods.
You try to put forth an outrage that the leaders of Scientology might have expended some resources in assisting Tom Cruise, under the implicit claim that they would have misused the religion’s funds to help one individual in his matchmaking. However, that’s not really valid from a number of points.
1st, I’d suspect Cruise has personally donated large quantities of money to the organization for quite some time. If so, you could argue that they very likely didn’t dip into money donated by other individuals on this project, which was of relatively small scope.
Second, you point out he’s been a face of Scientology — essentially one of their spokespersons. As such, they likely consider him a valuable asset for representing the organization’s interests. It could be reasonably argued that if they wanted to help him in any number of ways, their organization as a whole stands to benefit. His well-being provides them with a highly visible, successful spokesperson. Further, if he becomes romantically involved with someone who’s bad for him or bad for the organization to be associated with, they could be damaged in terms of publicity by association.
Regardless, it’s not all that weird for celebs to apply some rigorous standards to choosing potential mates. It’s not all that scandalous that he might’ve chosen the church to assist him, even if that’s not the norm for Hollywood stars. And, it’s not necessarily gross mistreatment to end a relationship if it wasn’t working out — happens all the time.
What is all too common is for a magazine to take fairly straightforward events, along with what are likely some rumors, and mix them together to try to make them sound scandalous — all in the name of manipulating the public into greater interest and larger magazine sales. Looks like they might’ve been successful in your case in terms of convincing you that this is of significant interest.