What Your Donations Buy II: Vanity PR for David Miscavige

[Rae]

An excellent evaluation of the recent "Freedom" mag from Rebel 008. If my memory serves me well..Freedom was NEVER used in such a way as Miscavage just has.
http://leavingscientology.wordpress....vid-miscavige/

If you want to see the perfect representation of David Miscavige’s Brave New World of Scientology, then have a look at the full color, glossy, 80-page Freedom Magazine that was just produced and mailed out to every household in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillborough Counties, at a cost of millions of dollars – paid for, of course,  by Scientologists’ donations. http://www.freedommag.org/

Apparently the last three weeks have been a scramble, with reges squeezing every penny they could out of wealthy Scientologists “to defend the Church” and PR and Marketing staff up day and night to write and lay out this massive PR piece.

And what did you get for all that money and effort? A huge vanity piece for David Miscavige. That’s right.  Article after article about Miscavige. Fifteen glossy color photos of David Miscavige. And how many pictures of LRH? None. That’s right, zip.

It’s supposed to be a “PR handling” for the first series of Saint Petersburg Times articles. But who caused this “PR flap”? If you read the articles and listen to the interviews, you’ll see that those speaking out are not attacking Scientology, Scientologists, or L. Ron Hubbard. They are exposing the culture of violence and abuse which Miscavige has engendered at the highest levels of Scientology. They are exposing Miscavige’s lies. They are exposing the huge and expensive PR machine he has put into place to hide his crimes.

In other words, the “PR flap” was caused by Miscavige himself. And you have to pay to handle it. By producing a glossy, 80 page brochure with one purpose – to glorify Miscavige, and perpetuate his lies about the “expansion” of Scientology.

Of the “expansion statistics” listed, most have to do with the square footage of buildings purchased. In other words, Miscavige’s “Ideal Org” real estate scam. The magazine says that there are over 8,000 “orgs, missions and groups.” Well, where are they? Why can’t we see them? Are they invisible? If this is true, why doesn’t the Church list all their addresses on their website? Or is it just an empty lie?

How many of these “Ideal Orgs” are empty shells?

And as for their attacks on the St. Petersburg Times reporters and the former executives who have spoken out? Well, see my earlier post about “attacking the attacker” and why it is usually perceived as an admission of guilt. It is Miscavige, once again, trying to change the subject. “Look at how bad these people are” he says. “Look how good I am.” “Look at all this expansion.” That is not the subject. That is not the issue. The issue is one thing and one thing only – the abuse and violence within Miscavige’s Brave New World of Scientology. And it is being exposed. And will continue being exposed.

But let’s get down to practicality here. Who was this puff piece mailed to? The entire population of the Tampa Bay area. How many people do you think will read 80 pages of puff PR about David Miscavige? How many will throw it straight into the trash?

Imagine you live in Utah and there is a big expose in a local paper about abuse in the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints). A few weeks later you get an 80-page booklet about the wonderful leader of the FLDS, Merril Jessop, and the “amazing expansion” of the FLDS, with glossy pictures of their huge facilities. Would you read it from cover to cover? Or would you throw it in the trash? Would you think they were wasteful? Strange? Covering up?

Now you know how “effective” this brochure will be. Not. It was a waste of money. Your money.

It was produced for one reason and one reason only. David Miscavige’s massive ego.

When are Scientologists going to wake up and stop writing blank checks to this narcissistic, violent dictator who is destroying Scientology?

[FinallyFree]

This is a great post - thank you for sharing. I think the author is spot on.

[Trezmille]

just read the source
http://www.freedommag.org/

[TheSneakster]

..

[_brian]

Blog linked claims it cost "millions of dollars" to do this Freedom Mag mail-shot, which is a load of crap.

A more realistic estimate would be between $10K and $30K, tops.

Michael "The Sneakster" Hobson
I am *not* anonymous. I *do* forgive.

So that means DM claimed he needed millions in raised donations and scored a nice profit

[Reasonable]

Right on

[Rae]

Blog linked claims it cost "millions of dollars" to do this Freedom Mag mail-shot, which is a load of crap.

A more realistic estimate would be between $10K and $30K, tops.

Michael "The Sneakster" Hobson
I am *not* anonymous. I *do* forgive.

Probably would be good to contact the writer and find out what, if any, the source of that info is.

[lkwdblds]

An excellent evaluation of the recent "Freedom" mag from Rebel 008. If my memory serves me well..Freedom was NEVER used in such a way as Miscavage just has.
http://leavingscientology.wordpress....vid-miscavige/

If you want to see the perfect representation of David Miscavige’s Brave New World of Scientology, then have a look at the full color, glossy, 80-page Freedom Magazine that was just produced and mailed out to every household in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillborough Counties, at a cost of millions of dollars – paid for, of course,  by Scientologists’ donations. http://www.freedommag.org/

Apparently the last three weeks have been a scramble, with reges squeezing every penny they could out of wealthy Scientologists “to defend the Church” and PR and Marketing staff up day and night to write and lay out this massive PR piece.

And what did you get for all that money and effort? A huge vanity piece for David Miscavige. That’s right.  Article after article about Miscavige. Fifteen glossy color photos of David Miscavige. And how many pictures of LRH? None. That’s right, zip.

It’s supposed to be a “PR handling” for the first series of Saint Petersburg Times articles. But who caused this “PR flap”? If you read the articles and listen to the interviews, you’ll see that those speaking out are not attacking Scientology, Scientologists, or L. Ron Hubbard. They are exposing the culture of violence and abuse which Miscavige has engendered at the highest levels of Scientology. They are exposing Miscavige’s lies. They are exposing the huge and expensive PR machine he has put into place to hide his crimes.

In other words, the “PR flap” was caused by Miscavige himself. And you have to pay to handle it. By producing a glossy, 80 page brochure with one purpose – to glorify Miscavige, and perpetuate his lies about the “expansion” of Scientology.

Of the “expansion statistics” listed, most have to do with the square footage of buildings purchased. In other words, Miscavige’s “Ideal Org” real estate scam. The magazine says that there are over 8,000 “orgs, missions and groups.” Well, where are they? Why can’t we see them? Are they invisible? If this is true, why doesn’t the Church list all their addresses on their website? Or is it just an empty lie?

How many of these “Ideal Orgs” are empty shells?

And as for their attacks on the St. Petersburg Times reporters and the former executives who have spoken out? Well, see my earlier post about “attacking the attacker” and why it is usually perceived as an admission of guilt. It is Miscavige, once again, trying to change the subject. “Look at how bad these people are” he says. “Look how good I am.” “Look at all this expansion.” That is not the subject. That is not the issue. The issue is one thing and one thing only – the abuse and violence within Miscavige’s Brave New World of Scientology. And it is being exposed. And will continue being exposed.

But let’s get down to practicality here. Who was this puff piece mailed to? The entire population of the Tampa Bay area. How many people do you think will read 80 pages of puff PR about David Miscavige? How many will throw it straight into the trash?

Imagine you live in Utah and there is a big expose in a local paper about abuse in the FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints). A few weeks later you get an 80-page booklet about the wonderful leader of the FLDS, Merril Jessop, and the “amazing expansion” of the FLDS, with glossy pictures of their huge facilities. Would you read it from cover to cover? Or would you throw it in the trash? Would you think they were wasteful? Strange? Covering up?

Now you know how “effective” this brochure will be. Not. It was a waste of money. Your money.

It was produced for one reason and one reason only. David Miscavige’s massive ego.

When are Scientologists going to wake up and stop writing blank checks to this narcissistic, violent dictator who is destroying Scientology?

Rae - Good to encounter your post and see that you are still posting. Very thorough well written article. Remember the old HCOB, "What your fees buy?" Things have changed a little since the time that was written; at that time purchasing real estate was not mentioned in the bulletin and now real estate, along with attorney's, private investigators and legal fees probably constitute almost 100% of what your fees buy.

I can not for the life of me understand why C of S does not value their staff members far more than they do. Staff food, pay, sleeping facilities, medical and personal enhancement seem to be dismissed as "other intentionedness" and the staff are allowed to work until they breadk down and can no longer perform at which point they are discarded as PTS or DB's. To me, once I discovered that LRH was totally behind this approach and that it is the way he designed and wanted things to be, my confidence, in particular, in his system of management plummeted like a stone and, in general, his being my main spiritual leader, taking every word he uttered as "the gospel", likewise went totally down the tubes.
lkwdblds

[Dulloldfart]

Blog linked claims it cost "millions of dollars" to do this Freedom Mag mail-shot, which is a load of crap.

A more realistic estimate would be between $10K and $30K, tops.

Per Wikipedia, the number of households in those three counties (2000 census) totals 953,891. I'm not sure what the postage rate for a freedom mag would be, but from looking over the US postage rates for non-profits for pieces between 3.3 and 16 ounces each the lowest is 8 cents and the highest much more. I assume the CofS would have bar-coded addresses etc. Let's be generous and say 10 cents a pop. That rounds out to about $100k for postage.

Paper and ink and so forth would add to the cost, of course. Do they produce such mags in-house? I know they do their own POD books, but full-colour mags too?

Even so, it doesn't add up to millions, as you say.

Paul

[Thrak]

I love the bit about "at the helm of scio's explosive growth". That makes me laugh. Explosive growth of what? I guess you could say a dead body has an explosive growth of bacteria.