Anderson Cooper is launching a weeklong investigative series about Scientology tomorrow. Looks excellent.

Anderson Cooper is launching a weeklong series about Scientology Monday, covering many of the allegations against the controversial religion already reported by RadarOnline.com.

Anderson Cooper 360, the CNN anchor’s nightly news show, is looking at Scientology’s “history of violence,” especially allegations that leader – and Tom Cruise best friend – David Miscavige has personally physically abused his followers.

Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis, son of actress Anne Archer, is interviewed by Cooper and claims that while there has been violence committed against members in the elite Sea Organization, the guilty offenders are those very people now making allegations against Miscavige.

Scientology is increasingly coming under attack by top-ranking members who’ve left the organization.  Interestingly, none of the top Hollywood stars who support Scientology, including Cruise, John Travolta, Jenna Elfman and Kirstie Alley, have commented.

(Radar Online: Anderson Cooper tackles Scientology)

(Anderson Cooper: Dispatches from the Edge)

Excellent clip of Christopher Hitchens on Real Time with Bill Maher taking a welding torch to the Catholic Church’s current policy on dealing with molester priests.

The Catholic Church is in serious trouble and may have nowhere to run, depending on who you ask.

“I warned them about all of this,” declared author Christopher Hitchens, appearing on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night. “Nothing good can come of a church that has as its’ slogan, ‘Leave no child’s behind.’ And then they went and chose as pope the man who was personally responsible, in his dioceses, and institutionally responsible for the cover-up. So now, there’s no escape.”

The child rape scandals that have savaged Catholic ranks for years starting in the United States, then flaring up in Ireland, Germany, Italy and other locations around the world, have finally come to implicate Pope Benedict XVI, according to recent reports.

At time of this writing, the most recent scandal flare-up involved a school for the deaf in Wisconsin, where up to 200 boys were molested by a man whom Hitchens said “was allowed to walk free and was buried with full honors as a priest.”

(Raw Story: Christopher Hitchens vs. Pope)

(Christopher Hitchens: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything)

No, not Mike Watt’s band. The OTHER Minutemen. The racist, belligerent, uneducated psychopaths who decided to “protect our borders” from… uh… our entire service economy. I always considered these guys some of the biggest pricks in our country… who VOLUNTEERS their time to “beat up the damn Mexicans”?

I grew up by the border and regularly witnessed the reality of border crossing… large groups of desperate, hungry people walking through huge passages of 120º, inhuman conditions to try and get to the other side, in the (often vain) hope of getting some money from menial labor to send back to huge families in Mexico (labor that “real Americans” aren’t willing to do anyway). People cross in large groups for safety in numbers—many don’t make it back alive; they drop dead from dehydration or heat stroke, or literally get picked off by human predators who hunt these people to rape them or rob them of what little savings they are bringing with them. Often the only way to get across is by paying Coyotes, professional border-crossers who are adept at smuggling people across, but usually charge what amounts to somebody’s entire life savings to get across. And they often just run off with the money, or kill for it. It’s hellish. Oh, and what does that sound like, by the way? Like every story of how white America got started? The pilgrims, the pioneers, the Mormon Battalion? That’s what it sounds like to me. If the American dream still exists anywhere, it’s here, with people who are willing to sacrifice anything and brave any danger for the chance for a better life.

Now, imagine going through all that, and having some scuzzy fuck with a “Don’t Tread on Me” hat shoving a gun in your face and telling you you’re taking American jobs—cleary not his, though, because he has nothing better to do then sit in the middle of the desert looking for people to fuck with.

Fuck them. May they stay dispersed forever.

(AlterNet: National Minuteman Border Group Disbands)

 
It’s all worth it for the close-up at 0:31
see also: Blurt-The Fish Needs A Bike

 
I’m reminded of the scene with the two idiots in the video rental store in The League of Gentlemen where one of them suggests a film and the other one shoots it down by saying “I don’t like movies with Bradley Pitt. Too much acting.”

(Via Copyranter)

Belligerent fast food customer loudly demands a cheeseburger; counterforce is employed; God bless America. This gets particularly good around 1:58.

(Via Encyclopedia Dramatica)

 
Wonderfully raw clips from The Ernest Tubb Show circa mid-60’s via my pal Jeff Copas, music aficionado and bassist of Sixteen Deluxe

...but my family has some deep country roots - I’m distantly related to Cowboy Copas (a Grand Ol Opry vet, who died in the plane crash with Patsy Cline), and my grandparents were Dust Bowl refugees, transplanted Texans who lived in the not-yet Silicon Valley, and country music was always playing in their house, a double-wide mobile home on the edge of some fruit orchards in San Jose, which seemed mostly rural then.

They had “Sunday Morning Coming Down” painted on the tire cover on the back of their Econoline van, in tribute to Johnny Cash, who they considered to be a Great American (he was). For relatively successful and somewhat urbane ex-hillbillies like them, Ernest Tubb was like a crazy old uncle that you love but are slightly embarrassed by, because he was just a little *too* country, and reminded them a little too much of the hard life they worked so hard to escape.

I’m embarrassed to say that I’d never heard of Leon Rhodes before tonight, because it’s obvious he’s one of the greatest guitarists to ever draw breath, but I’d say these two clips make a persuasive argument that the Texas Troubadours, at least around this era, were far more in line with the sophisticated Bob Wills/Western swing branch of country (jazz for honkies, essentially) than the humorous, podunk novelty tunes Tubb is more commonly associated with (rightly or wrongly). Rhodes’ delayed guitar effects, combined with his jazzy runs, makes me imagine Jerry Garcia, zonked on Owsley somewhere circa ‘66, catching this on television and exclaiming “oh, wow, man!”. And those green hats? Decidedly psychedelic.

 
I gasped out loud when the background singers first appeared in the below clip. Not to mention Willie Nelson. Copas again : “Ah, the casual elegance of a thirty-something Willie Nelson: wardrobe by J.C. Penney, hair by Brylcreem, and talent bursting at the seams.” Great stuff !
 

 
Sometimes you just have to express what it is you are feeling inside. No matter what.

(via PCL and Nerdcore)

 
Robert Fripp doing what he does best—tearing it the fuck up—with his “punk” combo, The League of Gentlemen. The Disinformation logo was inspired by this album cover (which was done by Danielle Dax).
 

 
He’s back! The black Glenn Beck himself, the “Hon” James David Manning, PhD, self-appointed… something or other. And now he’s got a brand new Obama conspiracy theory:

“Hon. James David Manning says Barack Hussein “The Long Legged Mack Daddy” Obama was a C.I.A operative who used Columbia University as a cover to go to Pakistan in 1981 when the CIA and the Mujahideen worked together against the Soviet Invasion. Obama supplied arms, logistics, and money using his Muslim background.”

I still can’t help thinking of Uncle Ruckus from The Boondocks when I watch this character.

 
And to prove it he stomps on a vibrator that he already owns while his collection of My Little Pony toys looks on.

 
Jonathan Bell, AKA Screaming Boy, first came to my attention via a VHS tape given to me in the mid-90s of the only two episodes of his Dallas, TX-based cable access evangelical program. He screamed a lot, talked (yelled) about Jesus, abortions, gays and how you were going to GO TO HELL! His favorite topics seemed to be abused children and how you were going to GO TO HELL. Twisted, twisted stuff. Picture a nelly blond Sam Kinison-type in a tux—and totally and deliriously insane—and you’ve got Jonathan Bell. Eventually The Daily Show caught up to Bell and did a memorable segment about him, but before that, the only information I was able to dig up about him, pre-Internet came from a “Kooky Kontemporary Kristian Kulture” zine called Snake Oil that is now online:

Upstart TV preachers flock to Dallas like young starlets drawn to Hollywood. So begins the story of Jonathan Bell who arrived in Dallas from Kingston, Ontario in early 1992 with a vision from God to start a television ministry. Accompanying Jonathan were Carrie Hart, a 71-year-old invalid and her 35-year-old retarded son. With the $1400 per month that the Harts received in government checks, the three got set up in a one bedroom apartment in the predominately gay Oak Lawn section of Dallas, and Jonathan Bell Ministries was on its way.

That first Texas summer, however, took its toll on the trio of transplanted Canadians. Their living arrangement had deteriorated to the point that on the night of July 28th, police were called to the scene of a domestic disturbance at the ministry apartment, whereupon Jonathan was hauled in on aggravated assault of an invalid.

The police incident report reveals a sorry state of affairs: Jonathan typically sent the Harts out early each morning on ministry errands, and they were expected back promptly at 9 PM. Being late, or not following instructions exactly resulted in a beating. Neighbors told police that they had seen the Harts with bruises and black eyes, and Harry Hart, the son, claimed that earlier in the summer Jonathan had tried to drown him at an area lake by holding him underwater by his hair. The Harts were given just a few dollars a month, and Jonathan got the only bed while they slept on the floor with no bedding.

Within a few days of Jonathan’s arrest, the Harts went back to Canada, and the charges were dropped.

This sordid little tale would not be worth telling if shortly thereafter Jonathan had not gone on to produce two of the most psychotic, disturbing religious programs ever made.

 
Continue reading Screaming Boy (Snake Oil)