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TwitterTom Cruise on Oprah: 'stolen' Scientology videos, Brooke Shields and 'child drugging'
Tom Cruise talked about it all on Oprah Winfrey's show, taped at his Telluride, Colorado home.
Well, almost all. (See Times television critic Mary McNamara's review on our sister blog Show Tracker.)
Katie Holmes, now his wife, welcomed Winfrey to the couple's home at the top of the show. Then she left Cruise to take Oprah on a tour, including a peek at daughter Suri's playrooms, the kitchen, (what, no fridge opening?) Cruise's collection of leather-bound film scripts, and the home's view of snow-topped peaks in Telluride, Colorado.
Winfrey and a subdued, denim-clad Cruise sat on an overstuffed couch in the family's living room, and talked about that couch hopper moment in their last interview. "That was a moment, and it was real, and I don't know if I would (do it differently). I really don't," Cruise admitted.
On his reputation: "Listen I, I feel like definitely things have been misunderstood, and there are things I could have done better," Cruise admits. "But then there's also that world where you go, 'Oh, it's been spun to such an extent that ... that's a truth also.' "
On his marriage to Katie Holmes being phony: "That's laughable to me," Cruise says."'You just know that they're trying to sell it and spin it."
And according to Cruise, that Scientology video that leaked on the Web "was stolen. I was receiving an award that evening for global literacy. It was a very private moment. I'm actually talking to my congregation."
"It's [taken] totally out of context," he added.
But he dodged Winfrey's question about whether he feels people negatively target him because of his Scientology beliefs:
"It's a minority religion, and I think that sometimes people misinterpret [it]," he says. "I think the best thing is for people to read about it themselves. I believe people have the right to choose what they believe in.
"The code of Scientologists says you respect the religious beliefs of others," Cruise adds. "That's part of being a Scientologist, and that's who I am as a person."
On his Brooke Shields comments: "What I regret is even discussing Brooke in any way," Cruise says. She later attended his wedding to Katie in Italy.
On the issue of children and psychiatric drugs: "For me, my issue was really about child drugging. It's not like it is today, like people are really kind of openly talking about this."
He added: "I think the parent should be able to and should make that decision."
When Oprah asked about a book that claimed Suri was not his child:
"I've had a lot of books written about me. When someone compares your daughter to Rosemary's baby -- it's one thing to come after me. Say stuff about me. But when it comes to my family, my children, that's when I went, 'This is off the chart.'"
Cruise says he's learned there are some times when he needs to communicate with the public more and other times when he should probably communicate less.
"I feel like definitely things have been misunderstood, and things that I could have done better," he said.
You can see the rest of the Oprah-Tom chat Monday on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."
In the meantime, here's a round-up of this week's questions and answers.
What do you think? Can Tom Cruise get his career back on track?
Credit: Harpo Productions / AP
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"What do you think? Can Tom Cruise get his career back on track?"
No. Not until he satisfactorily explains what it is that he meant by "We are the authorities" on mental health, getting people off drugs, and rehabilitating criminals. Not until he tells the truth about the reasoning behind his anti-psychiatry rants (the paranoid writings of sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard). Not until he stops acting completely crazy. Not until he explains how he can live in that swanky house, with his snowmobile and his view while people eat rice and beans in the Rehabilitation Project Force (Scientology's prison camp). For all his current blather about parents' choices on medications for children, Tom is actively campaigning to have psychiatry declared a "crime against humanity." What?
He's deluded, brainwashed and crazy, and no amount of puff-piece coverage from Oprah is going to erase that, or the public's recognition of it.
He can get his career back on track if he leaves the Cult of Scientology. Otherwise, he's a goner, because he has a lot of questions to answer that aren't softballs, like why he gives millions of dollars to a cult that has a record of tax fraud, gov't infiltration, threatening critics, denying its members their medicine (to the point of death in a few cases), and slave child labor in Hemet, California. If he's going to be part of that, and give money to that, and promote all that, we demand an answer for it.
Also his days are probably numbered as he spent a lot of time on the Freewinds, a boat ridden with blue asbestos, the most dangerous type of asbestos, which can cause lung cancer from a single incident of exposure.
http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.asp?n=1&neID=200805023600.3_33bc000d60868fe7
or read more about anything I just mentioned at
xenu.net
whyweprotest.org
Crazy indeed...nice publicity stunt.
Frankly, I don't care what he talks about or "goes on" about. If people want to listen to his rants, fine with me. He'll get his career back when he acts in a decent movie.
http://www.watchman.org/sci/hubm
Hubbard was clearly involved in the occult. In 1945, L. Ron Hubbard met Jack Parsons, who was a renowned scientist, protégé of occultist Aleister Crowley, and a member of the notorious Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), an international organization founded by Crowley to practice sexual black magic.
Parsons had Hubbard move onto the property of Parsons' Pasadena, California, home. It was there that Hubbard began to practice the occult and sexual magic. Parsons' mistress, Sara Northrup, left him for Hubbard and later became Hubbard's second wife, even before Hubbard had divorced his first wife (The Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1990, p. A37).
Biographer Russell Miller wrote, "Parsons considered that Ron had great magical potential and took the risk of breaking his solemn oath of secrecy to acquaint Ron with some of the O.T.O. rituals.... Parsons wrote to his 'Most Beloved Father' (his term for Aleister Crowley) to acquaint him with events: 'About three months ago I met Captain L. Ron Hubbard.... Although he has no formal training in Magick, he has an extraordinary amount of experience and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences I deduced that he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence, possibly his Guardian Angel. He describes his Angel as a beautiful winged woman with red hair whom he calls the Empress and who has guided him through his life and saved him many times. He is the most Thelemic [self-willed, independent] person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles'" (Russell Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah: the True Story of L. Ron Hubbard, 1987, pp. 117-8, emphasis added).
"Parsons wanted to attempt an experiment in black magic that would push back the frontiers of the occult world. With the assistance of his new friend, he intended to try and create a 'moonchild' - the magical child 'mightier than all the kings of the earth,' whose birth had been prophesied in The Book of the Law more than forty years earlier" (Ibid., p. 119).
Former high ranking Scientologists Brent Corydon and Hubbard's son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr., wrote, "In order to obtain a woman prepared to bear this magical child, Parsons and Hubbard engaged themselves for eleven days of rituals ¼ on January 18th, Parsons found the girl who was prepared to become the mother of Babylon, and to go through the required incantation rituals. During these rituals, which took place on the first three days of March 1946, Parsons was High Priest and had sexual intercourse with the girl, while Hubbard who was present acted as skryer, seer, or clairvoyant and described what was supposed to be happening on the astral plane" (Bent Corydon & L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., L. Ron Hubbard: Messiah or Madman?, 1987, pp. 256-7).
L. Ron Hubbard and Aleister Crowley
Sometime in his teens Hubbard accompanied his mother to the Library of Congress where he became acquainted with Aleister Crowley's The Book of the Law. Crowley alleged this book was dictated to him by Aiwas, a spirit possessing fantastic knowledge and powers. This was Crowley's Bible and perhaps the most important book in the life of L. Ron Hubbard (Ibid., p. 47).
Crowley's Magick in Theory and Practice states: "The whole and sole object of all true magickal training is to become free from every kind of limitation....(cited in Messiah or Madman, p. 48). "Hubbard says, in a 1952 taped Scientology lecture: 'Our whole activity tends to make an individual completely independent of any limitation...'" (Ibid.).
In Hubbard's 1952 Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures, he states:
"The magical cults of the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th centuries in the Middle East were fascinating. The only modern work that has anything to do with them is a trifle wild in spots, but is a fascinating work in itself, and that's the work of Aleister Crowley - the late Aleister Crowley - my very good friend.... He signs himself 'the Beast,' mark of the Beast 666..." (Ibid.).
"According to Ron Jr. his father considered himself to be the one 'who came after'; that he was Crowley's successor; that he had taken on the mantle of the 'Great Beast.' He told him that Scientology actually began on December 1st, 1947. This was the day Aleister Crowley died" (Ibid., p. 50).
As with other areas of Hubbard's life, Scientologists have attempted to revise the understanding of these events. While they admit that Parsons was a leader of a black magic group, that a girl was used in a sex ritual, and that Hubbard moved in, Scientology claims that Hubbard was working underground for Naval Intelligence. Scientology claims that Hubbard rescued the girl and he was able to "break up black magic in America" (Jon Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky, pp. 89-90).
Yet, the F.B.I. files on Parsons showed that he was investigated regularly because of his government job and retained his high security clearance until his death. There is no mention of Hubbard in any investigation (Ibid.).
Also, Parsons' widow disputed Scientology's account, stating that Parsons and Hubbard liked each other very much and worked well together (The Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1990, p. A37). It is certain that the O.T.O. and black magic in America have never been broken up.
Furthermore, in 1957, Hubbard wrote a Scientology bulletin describing Parsons as "quite a man." And in 1952, Hubbard favorably refers to the late Aleister Crowley, indicating that "he was my very good friend" (Philadelphia Doctorate Course Lectures 18, 35, 40).agk2.htm
I think Tom Cruise has a perfect right to spout whatever cult-driven propaganda he wishes to, just like all fundamentalists everywhere.
His privileged position within the cult of Scientology keeps him insulated from the enforced abortions, the suppression of the freedom of speech, and the thousands of families destroyed by the practice of enforced disconnection. Mr. Cruise needs to take responsibility for these abuses and handle them within Scientology before I will ever see another movie of his. He is out-ethics until he does.
"His congregation?!@!" WTF, is he a preacher now? I have never trusted this guy and he clearly doesn't regret his arrogant and reckless comments. "There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance...exercise and vitamins...you don't know psychiatry, I do" Please, he's a high-school dropout who never went to college, ran his mouth and is now playing the victim. I will never purchase a ticket to one of his films.
Go Tom. The man has a lot of guts to do what he is doing. And that is what I like about him.
You said it all, Liberty. Mr. Cruise and his ludicrous cult and Oprah's narcissistic self-congratulatory posturing belong on the same stage. Unfortunately, that stage doesn't belong on television... Im surprised they found a stage big enough to fit both of their heads. What do you think are the odds that Oprah's a secret scientologist? What a couple of nutjobs.