They're All A Bunch of Losers

While listening to the radio I heard a bit of the BBC Panorama reporter going ballistic with a Scientology representative.

Knowing there's more to the story, and knowing everything always ends up on YouTube, I was rewarded.



Above is the losing it snippet (the Scientology approved and provided version). It's a classic of the genre, it may never be topped. He goes from zero to insane, then back to zero, then right back to insane, in nothing flat. It's marvelous. Michael Palin doing his martinet routine couldn't have done it better.

But there was a backstory of course, as there always is. Sweeney was doing a hit piece on Scientology, and he was being pointedly jerky with all his pro-Scientology subjects. He would have done a better job destroying them had he not childishly insisted on bringing up Xenu or insisting on calling their religion a cult to their faces.

They are creepy enough when allowed to say what they want to say that you don't need to be confrontational to make them look like assholes. Instead he came across as the asshole the whole time. He lost it where he had his strongest case against them. Their ridiculous assertion that psychiatry can be blamed for the holocaust, 9/11, and just about every other thing wrong with this world is pretty damn crazy, and if it wasn't against their religion, I'd suggest they all need to seek psychiatric help. It's a sick and twisted game that Scientologists play when they try and subvert history to support their own pet neuroses regarding psychiatry. But, because that's where Sweeney loses it, that point might be lost on some viewers.

It does seem fairly clear that 'fair game' (explained in the piece as the practice of savaging critics and intimidating them with every legal, physical and emotional trick possible) is still in play, even if they claim that's not part of their tactics anymore.

It's entertaining, even if it's a bit vile, and for the moment is up in its entirety on YouTube.

Panorama Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

And his Scientologist stalker minder, Tommy Davis, is a close talker, I hate close talkers (but you have to love the Judge Reinhold)



It's hard to know who to hate more in this, on the one hand you have Tommy Davis who is pretty damn creepy, on the other you have the ridiculously biased and supremely unjournalistic BBC Panorama crew, which make our crappy 20/20s and Datelines look downright responsible.

I'd call it a draw this time, but there's definitely no winners in this exchange, only losers.

Here's Sweeney's explanation (or apology in the original sense of the word) regarding these events.