Scientology settles the score

I am addressing the piece by Dominique Ritter, "Putting personality to the test" [August 20]. First, in her attempted cheap shot at Mr. Hubbard's career as a writer, she obviously failed to do her research. If she had, she would have found that in the 1980s Mr. Hubbard had 21 international best sellers, including 15 consecutive New York Times best sellers--a feat unmatched in publishing history. Similar cheap shots were aimed at some Scientologists who are celebrities, but also known to be decent individuals.

Her repetition of old, disproved rumours about the Church also shows shallow research. To quote only a handful of critics is to ignore the 8 million members worldwide who tell a different story. In any event, this issue was settled in October 1993 when, after a two-year painstaking investigation, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service granted full religious and charitable status to all Scientology churches and related organizations. Canadian provincial governments have also issued similar recognitions, which confounded the skeptics.

By the way, the Oxford Capacity Analysis is a measure of someone's own estimation of themselves, with respect to 10 personality traits, so that one can better estimate their personal condition and make better choices about their future. Then it is up to the person to try the proven methods Scientology offers to improve one's life. While we have congregational services in our chapel, our key religious practices are aimed at increasing one's spiritual awareness and basic goodness. Our members are very much oriented in helping the community. For example, the Church supports the secular and independent Narcanon organization in Montreal, which rehabilitates locals with hard drug addictions. My message: find out for yourself, go to your local library and pick up a copy of What Is Scientology, The Scientology Handbook or other books by L. Ron Hubbard. Read them and make up your own mind about the subject.

-Jean Larivière,
Director of Special Affairs, Église de Scientologie de Montréal

Film filibustering by the AFI

It came as a welcome relief to know that at least one other person besides me was distraught over the American Film Institute's "Top 100" film list ["The greatest American films, according to who?" August 20]. It might better be renamed the American Fascist Institute. That the left and populist legacy of American film should be so thoroughly blotted out evinces fear in me. Where is For Whom the Bell Tolls? Where is John Garfield? Where are Dalton Trumbo and Dashiell Hammett? Where are any of the anti-fascist films of the Second World War, which likewise possessed aesthetic as well as political worth? (Watch on the Rhine, scripted by Lillian Hellman comes to mind.) Where are the Barrymores or, for that matter, Warner Brothers, on this list?

The eeriest example of this blotting out of history that I have witnessed was in the colourized version of The Red Badge of Courage with Audie Murphy, a film dramatization of the Civil War novel by Stephen Crane. The original film had Andy Devine and Walter Brennan, both distinguished character actors of their day who specialized in portraying everyday folk. They were completely edited out of the colourized version. Other people official America would rather forget are intelligent adult males possessed of the capacity for rational judgment and good behavior, such as Walter Pidgeon, Leo G. Carroll, and Dick Powell (The Thin Man). Spartacus surely rates as a pathfinding film for its day and sold as well as the Ten Commandments.

These days rate as Double Plus Ungood, however one chooses to rewrite history to suit Big Brother, whom I choose to love so much as it takes to get close enough to kick him square and truly in his mouse-sized balls.

Kind regards to my northern friends in relative social democratic Utopia.

-Walt O'Brien,
Member U.S. Labor Party

Film flustering by readers

Do you really consider the Cinéma L'Amour as a repertory house? Or should you create a new section called Masturbatory Houses/Fantasy Houses/Houses of Sweet Delights?

What is this--political correctness extended to an absurd, stupid extreme? Or is the Mirror disguising economic advantage under a pseudo political correctness? We think this is a little disgusting. Please, consider removing Cinéma L'Amour listings.

-Eric and Julia