It just occurred to me, as I was blogging about Tom Cruise's Les Grossman character, that one of the reasons he is quite good on this role, on top of him being a natural-born actor, is that it almost perfectly illustrates the "Tone 40" concept of Scientology, at least in the way it is (mis)applied. I wrote a whole page about it in the past, entitled: "
The Total Causation Philosophy of Scientology".
What is more, I have known some high-level executives in Scientology that were quite like the Grossman character. The concepts I develop in the page above, lend themselves quite well to this kind of verbal abuses, and I believe that some people for whom it already is a natural tendency, must feel rather comfortable with these.
From what I read, L. Ron Hubbard himself may not have been that far off this kind of behavior.
David Miscavige too. Having had all the time to exactly mimic LRH because he was one of his personal messengers (who have to repeat exactly the same words with the exact same tone), Miscavige seems to have learned well from his mentor in this respect as well...
This being said, I remember some Scientologists arguing about the fact that the real "Tone 40" is supposed to be the exact contrary than what is being portrayed. While at the beginning it is true you
shout on the astray with all your lungs, the drill ends up without a word uttered - the real aim of the drill being to get that same level of intense intended intention but without actually shouting anything, even while just speaking normally...
It is singular indeed that Margery Wakefield in the link above completely omits the later, and truer, part of the drill, that consist of giving the same comment totally silently, with intention alone. It also further illustrates how critics can twist the real Scientology (either by ignorance, stupidity, or intent), then proceed to "criticize" Scientology based on such a misunderstanding, echoed later by an army of critics repeating this kind of "criticism" all over the Internet and beyond.
Later on, this is even better illustrated as she writes about giving a person such a command while shouting, whereas the real drill of that one is precisely not to shout at all, but give the commands, albeit verbally, with total intention.
She may not be the only one to misunderstand that concept, though, and I believe many Scientologists do too, as I mentioned in the beginning of this entry. For a while, I myself fell for it, as my memory of the drill after all these years was mostly the screaming part, until I read the reminder above.
PS - an other illustration of gross misunderstanding of Scientology concept is when I saw a staff member actually hitting her leg again with the same strenght as the initial accident in an attempt to apply the idea of contact assist, where you have to redo several times what you just did in the accident to ease off the mental image and subsequent pain of it. Obviously, you don't have to hit your leg again, you only have to redo the movement without the hit, but she had understood it that way and fanatically applied it even though it must have meant excruciating pain!
Anonymous can't manage to get much in the press those days, but they can still manage to parasite high profile Scientologists for photo opportunities when they get in the news. It is the case in this U.K. article about the New York premiere of Valkyrie.
Cruise's role in Tropic Thunder has been almost universally acknowledged as stealing the show from the movie, and has now earned him a Golden Globe nomination. However, up to this day, I still read rave comments about it: 
It's interesting to see that in spite of the negative publicity Tom Cruise suffered of late, foxnews still consider him a bigger banking star than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie: 
