Isaac Hayes Quits 'South Park,' citing Religious Persecution

[NYCe]

His reasoning is such bullshit I can't believe he said it with a straight face.

Isaac Hayes Quits 'South Park,'

By ERIN CARLSON, Associated Press Writer 39 minutes ago

NEW YORK -
Isaac Hayes has quit "South Park," where he voices Chef, saying he can no longer stomach its take on religion.

Hayes, who has played the ladies' man/school cook in the animated Comedy Central satire since 1997, said in a statement Monday that he feels a line has been crossed.

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.

"Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored," he continued. "As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

"South Park" co-creator Matt Stone responded sharply in an interview with The Associated Press Monday, saying, "This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology... He has no problem — and he's cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians."

Last November, "South Park" targeted the Church of Scientology and its celebrity followers, including actors
Tom Cruise and
John Travolta, in a top-rated episode called "Trapped in the Closet." In the episode, Stan, one of the show's four mischievous fourth graders, is hailed as a reluctant savior by Scientology leaders, while a cartoon Cruise locks himself in a closet and won't come out.

Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker "never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin."

[chefmike]

He's a scientologist? Damn...another scientology zombie, what a shame...if he's one of those zombies then he would have no choice...

find out here, and get some laughs too-
www.clambake.org

[Quinn]

This doesn't make any sense at all. I recently heard Hayes address exactly this issue during a radio interview. When asked how he felt about scientology's portrayal, he said that it was no big deal at all because Parker and Stone make fun of everything – so you can't take the show or yourself too seriously. He laughed about the whole thing and seemed to have a good time with it.

I wonder if someone within the scientology hierarchy heard the interview and put pressure on him. Either way, if this is true, it's just another example of yet another entertainer who takes himself too seriously. What a bunch of assholes!!

-Quinn

[skweetis]

yeah, this is complete and utter bullshit.
scientology...ugh.

[Caleigh]

ok, i'm NOT a scientologist, but if anyone actually
did their research the concepts and techniques are
both very rational and easy to apply. the major
problem with scientology, as with almost all
major religions (imho) is the structure, the hierarchy
and the dogma surrounding them.

the 10 commandments, not a bad set of guidelines
to live a life by. women having to shave their heads
and wear really awful looking wigs, just plain silly.
slaughtering innocent people in the name of ones
god? moronic and criminal

but that's just me

[The American Nightmare]

ok, i'm NOT a scientologist, but if anyone actually
did their research the concepts and techniques are
both very rational and easy to apply.

Riiiiight....

>> Click me << for more info.

[Quinn]

Here's a rather lengthy excerpt from an expose article about the Church of Scientolgoy (CO$), which has to be one of the most vile cults ever established:

Like all conspiracy freaks, Scientologists adhere to an all-encompassing worldview. Theirs is a particularly bizarre mixture of cosmology, metaphysics, and pseudoscience which purports to explain both the history of the universe and the nature of the immortal soul. But this stuff is pretty much the stock in trade for any religion, so that doesn't make them special.

But unlike most religions, Scientology maintains just a thin, half-hearted pretense of being concerned with spiritual matters. Theirs is suspiciously vague, and malleable to the needs of the prospective Scientologist. When recruiting, the church presents a remarkably inclusive stance toward pre-existing religious beliefs. Scientology is presented as just an adjunct to your present faith, perfectly compatible with practically every religion on Earth. So they don't mind it one bit if you continue to worship Allah or Buddha or Yahweh or Christ.

This unparalleled ecumenism is the official policy of the Church of Scientology; you can simultaneously belong to them and be a practicing member of any of the world's popular religions. In fact, you can be more than just a member. Scientology's founder himself asserted that "people of all major denominations are members of Scientology, including many priests, bishops, and other ordained church members of the major denominations."

(At least, that's what they tell you at first. In truth, you will be forbidden from engaging in "any rite, ceremony, practice, exercise, meditation, diet, food therapy or any similar occult, mystical, religious, naturopathic, homeopathic, chiropractic treatment or any other healing or mental therapy" without the express permission of three specific church elders. But you won't receive that revelation until you've already been a member for some time.)

Another key differentiator between Scientology and other self-described religious organizations is how they treat their holy texts. They consider the works which articulate the source of their belief system to be trade secrets, and the organization employs a battalion of attorneys to protect their copyrights on that intellectual property. Which is to say, they're not exactly generous with the big answers.

But why not? Wouldn't it be advantageous to open-source the contents of those sacred texts, and encourage religious studies majors to write papers on the greatest discovery in the history of mankind?

the scam
Which brings us to the heart of the matter. Scientology isn't really a religion. At least, not primarily one. A cover story in Time magazine characterized the group this way:

Scientology poses as a religion but really is a ruthless global scam.
Which is something of an overstatement. Who's to say that Scientology is a phony church but the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons are genuine? But Time was correct in this sense: whereas the dogma of most cults originates with some form of alleged divine revelation, the core beliefs of Scientology grew out of the business venture launched by a conniving bullshit artist.

It was in 1953, after profits began declining from his Dianetics franchise, that science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard slapped a veneer of spirituality on his self-help racket. It was a cynical effort which allowed him both to exert monopoly control over his invention, as well as limit the government's ability to tax and regulate him.

In composing sources of enlightenment for his oh-so-secular church, Hubbard generated 500,000 pages of text, 3,000 recorded lectures, and more than 100 films. These materials, produced over a span of decades, comprise the scriptures establishing the Scientology faith. Devout members shell out cold cash to cover the fixed donations required for the privilege of receiving these revelations, which are doled out in sequential installments. Members are required to consume the materials incrementally, and only under the supervision of a church elder.

It works like this. Members join the church, begin following the procedures outlined in Dianetics and other introductory coursework, and eventually purge themselves of what they term the "Reactive Mind." This is the self-defeating portion of your psyche, which springs into action at inopportune moments, triggered by traumatic memories. This feat is accomplished through an interactive process called "auditing." which is a strange mixture of psychotherapy and confessional. The subject is compelled to re-live painful and embarrassing episodes, which are duly taken down by an "auditor" and included in the subject's permanent record. The record is maintained and stored by the church. Therefore, the church collects extensive files containing accounts of its members' most shameful moments, things a person would go to great lengths to avoid being made publicly known. For instance, any and all homosexual encounters (defined as "deviant" behavior, and determined to be correctable).

The auditing process is accomplished through the use of a specialized electronic gizmo exclusively manufactured by and for the church. The device is called an "electropsychometer" or E-Meter for short. The E-Meter measures galvanic skin response -- fluctuations in electrical resistance on the surface of the skin -- and is pressed into service as a crude lie detector of sorts. (A genuine polygraph machine measures blood pressure and rate of breathing, in addition to changes in skin resistance.) Before he transformed his business into a religious organization, Hubbard marketed the E-Meter as a bona fide piece of medical equipment. He claimed it could be used to cure a variety of diseases, until the Food and Drug Administration cracked down on his quackery in 1963. Nowadays, E-Meters carry the following disclaimer, engraved on a little plaque on the underside of each unit:

By itself, this meter does nothing. It is solely for the guide of Ministers of the Church in Confessionals and pastoral counselling. The Electro-meter is not medically or scientifically capable of improving the health or bodily function of anyone and is for religious use by students and Ministers of the Church of Scientology only.

Using the E-Meter, Scientologists unburden themselves of the Reactive Mind. Once you have successfully accomplished this feat, you are declared "Clear." After becoming a Clear, you now possess a genius IQ, as well as a perfect memory, ideal physical health, and an inability to cause accidents. At which point, you are enticed to progress beyond Clear, into the advanced levels ascribed to Operating Thetans. Hence, the first stage is called OT I, the second OT II, and so on up to OT IX. The spiritual path is called "The Bridge to Total Freedom." At each step of The Bridge, you will accumulate increasingly powerful and extraordinary gifts, including the power to fly, turn invisible, perform astral projection, control matter and energy with only your mind, telepathy, ESP, etc.

In other words, Operating Thetans are capable of violating physical laws of the universe. In ecclesiastical terms, they can work miracles just like Jesus Christ. In fact, according to Hubbard, Jesus was simply an ordinary mortal who had somehow managed to bring himself "a shade above Clear." So Scientologists are in good company. (Of course, LRH also claimed the King of Kings was a boy fucker. Maybe not such good company after all.)

And all of this is available for just the low-low price of $380,000. That's the estimated cumulative cost of all the course materials and the many hours of auditing sessions required to reach the spiritual level known as OT IX. But $380k is a small price to pay for invisibility, right?

oppression
While you are working on your advanced coursework, you are required to adhere unfailingly to the instructions laid down by Hubbard, no matter how petty or bizarre, at risk of substantial penalties including excommunication. What's more, you are even enjoined from discussing the materials with other members. To do so would imperil your spiritual well-being, and theirs as well. Additionally, you are strictly forbidden from investigating the validity of the scriptures using unofficial sources, such as books not authorized by the church, or Internet sites.
To prevent Scientologists from inadvertently defying this order, they are encouraged to install filtering software on their personal computers, which contains a long list of excluded keywords chosen by church leadership. In addition to the names of church critics and websites objectionable to Scientology, for some reason this 1995 list also contained (and presumably still contains) hundreds of items, including the following:

a-hole, art student, asshole, blow job, bogus, bugger, dicks, fucker, ghost, lunacy, moaned, mother f-ker, mother fucker, motherfucker, murder, quadrillions, Satan, Satanic, screw, screwed, squeal like a pig, trillions, vagina
If, for some reason, a Scientologist breaks this rule and begins conducting unauthorized research into the history of the organization or its founder, they will be punished. If they are a member of the Sea Organization -- individuals who work full-time for the church, under billion-year employment contracts -- they can be assigned to the Rehabilitation Project Force. They are the ones given all the messy jobs and hard labor.

If that doesn't work, or if the member opts to quit the group, they can wind up excommunicated from the church. This is accomplished through a formal document declaring the former member to be a "Suppressive Person" -- an enemy of Scientology. And according to a memo written by Hubbard in October 1967, Suppressive Persons are to be considered "Fair Game," which he defined as:

May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.
The next year, Hubbard decided that the term Fair Game sounded too malevolent, so he banned the phrase from correspondence and documents. But he did not ban the methods it represented. In fact, during a court trial in 1984, the church actually defended the practice of Fair Game, claiming it to be a "core practice of Scientology" which was constitutionally-protected "religious expression."

handling critics
But Fair Game doesn't just apply to their own members; the Church of Scientology has a long and storied history of antagonizing external critics using smear campaigns, physical threats, and overwhelming litigation. For historical reasons, Scientology's holds longstanding grudges against:

blabbermouthed former Scientologists
the Internet
alt.religion.scientology
Operation Clambake
Scientology Kills
Psychiatry
the American Medical Association
the Internal Revenue Service
the Pharmaceutical industry

Also, the Co$ has over the years established a pattern of outright hostility toward government institutions, members of the press, and skeptics of every stripe. In a legal suit, the appellate court noted that the church even made a point of attacking judges:

Declarations of former members and officials of the Church, Gerald Armstrong and Vicki Aznaran, revealed the practices and policies of the Church, including its "fair game" doctrine and employment of litigation practices designed "to bludgeon the opposition into submission," as well as attacks against judges who rule against it. The declaration of an attorney who had represented the Church (Joseph A. Yanny), submitted in an action brought by the Church against him and others, related aspects of the Church's "fair game" doctrine, including copies of exhibits to demonstrate "the Cult, according to written policy, will use any means legal or illegal to subvert and frustrate judicial process against them, and will willingly and knowingly abuse judicial process in order to attack perceived 'enemies.'"

So if you speak out publicly against the Co$, or even just sit behind the bench listening to a court case against them, you run the risk of winding up like past Scientology critics. Your car's tires may be slashed. Friends might start telling you that somebody's been asking about your prior indiscretions. Anonymous flyers may appear in all the mailboxes in your neighborhood, accusing you of being a closet Nazi, or even a pederast.

After millionaire Bob Minton began financially supporting Scientology whistleblowers, his life got messy. When flyers appeared in his neighborhood, they called Minton a wifebeating Klansman. The church denied any involvement with the smear campaign, but later sent picketers to his house. And during an interview with Dateline, Scientology official Mike Rinder laid it on pretty thick:

RINDER: I don't know what motivates this guy, I don't know what. But on the other hand if you asked me, do I know what motivated Timothy McVeigh to go blow up a building -- because his view is that the people sitting inside that building are violating the rights of citizens of the United States -- I don't know why he does that. I... I don't know that you could --
JOURNALIST: Now you've just compared Bob Minton to Timothy McVeigh.
RINDER: No, motivation. Like, what is it that motivates someone to, to do that? I don't know. I don't know how you tell someone does that before they do it.
JOURNALIST: All right, but you very deliberately compared Bob Minton to Timothy McVeigh.
RINDER: All right.
NARRATOR: Minton says he has no plans to shoot or blow up anyone. But having to respond to such a charge at all is one sign of how completely his quiet life has changed since he decided to take on Scientology.

you wouldn't say that about the Jews
By far their favorite tactic is to tar critics with the "religious bigot" brush. That is, anybody with the audacity to call Scientology a "cult" or mock its preposterous ideology is automatically accused of denying the church its First Amendment rights.

In doing so, Scientologists appear to operate under an expectation that all religions are to be afforded an equal degree of respect by the general public. This is made evident in their favorite debate tactic: label your opponent the equivalent of a Jew-hater. That is, challenge their opponent to justify his position if it were about Judaism instead of Scientology. This Jedi mind trick is remarkably effective -- partly because a sane person avoids even the specter of anti-semitism, but also because most people have only a vague notion of the parameters of religious freedom.

Their implicit argument is that treating Scientology any different from more established faiths (eg. Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam) in and of itself somehow constitutes unfair discrimination. This is total bullshit. Just because the government has to observe strict impartiality toward a citizen's cherished mythology doesn't mean the rest of the general public does too. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say anything about it being illegal to ridicule or deride someone's lameass religious beliefs.

In America, it is your undeniable prerogative to practice religious freedom -- meaning, you can join any spiritual faith you like, no matter how ludicrous its theology or venal its leadership. For that matter, you are free to declare yourself an atheist, or even start a new religion. This fundamental right was enshrined in the Bill of Rights because the Founders knew all too well the gruesome history of religious persecution in the colonies (not to mention mother England).

Members of the Church of Scientology apparently fail to grasp that those other religious groups have developed their reputations as more-or-less benign organizations over centuries of good works. On the other hand, Scientology has instead demonstrated itself to be a paranoid institution obsessed with quashing dissent and establishing world hegemony.

To repeat: the Church of Scientology is certainly entitled to proselytize and share their nutball theology with everyone. For that matter, anybody who feels like surrendering themselves to the cult are free to do so. But no American -- not one -- is obliged to show them the tiniest modicum of respect, except insofar as the law requires (fair housing, equal employment, etc). And if they don't like their image, maybe they should stop acting like such thin-skinned, vicious assholes all the time.

-Quinn

[ezed]

NOW WHO THE FUCK'S GOING TO FEED US???? I NEED MY CHEESY POOFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Trogdor]

Dude, Isaac's gonna be a nutjob like Cruise is now.......and he's become a hypocrite as well. Isaac, apart from Shaft and Escape from New York, you had nothing till South Park came along. Not many people, apart from some in the 70's knew who the smeg you were till South Park came along and that's what got you famous again.

"Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored," he continued. "As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

You made a name for yourself on cartoon that made fun of politics, religion, and sex for 9 years and you had no problems with it untill they made fun of your messiah, Tom Cruise. If you supposedly have the backbone you claim to have, you'd have been bitching about South Park years ago, or not even start to begin with.

Good luck finding a new career in Hollywood, you foolish, foolish old fart. You got a sponge for a backbone


Who do you think is goning to be the next Scientologist crackpot?

I have a feeling Will Smith or Bruce Willis is going to be next. :P

[chefmike]

Here is a very good article from Rolling Stone magazine regarding the cult of Scientology-

Inside Scientology
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...de_scientology