There’s always this odd little question mark attached to Michael Kinsley’s distinguished journalism career because of the cloudy circumstances of how he came to miss out on the New Yorker editor slot that subsequently went to David Remnick, but I always stop and read anything attached to his byline. You’ve probably already read his New York Times Book Review piece about Lawrence Wright’s just-released Scientology exposé, Going Clear, but in case you missed it here’s a segment that takes aim at the long-delayed apostasy of filmmaker Paul Haggis, whom Kinsley doesn’t completely absolve:
“The fish that got away, Scientologists believed, was Steven Spielberg. He told Haggis that Scientologists ‘seem like the nicest people,’ and Haggis responded that ‘we keep all the evil ones in the closet,’ which was close enough to being true that Haggis was in hot water with the Scientology powers-that-be. But he didn’t quit.
Haggis joined Scientology in 1975, when he was 21. Wright assures us that Haggis ‘never lost his skepticism,’ but he must have misplaced it for a few decades. He remained a member and rose to be a top thetan among Scientologists through the death of L. Ron Hubbard and the rise of his successor, David Miscavige, who has often been described as sadistic. Then he read on the Internet about children ’10, 12 years old, signing billion-year contracts, . . . and they work morning, noon and night. . . . Scrubbing pots, manual labor — that so deeply touched me. My God, it horrified me.’ Still, he didn’t quit. Once again like American Communists on the eve of World War II, a few ‘useful idiots’ like Haggis held on through every moment of doubt and twist in the story. What finally pushed him over the edge, away from Scientology and out into the real world, was the church’s refusal to endorse gay marriage. Now, I’m for gay marriage. And Haggis has two gay daughters, so it’s understandable that he should feel particularly strongly about this issue. But some perspective, please: it’s like hanging on through the Moscow trials and then quitting the Communist Party because it won’t endorse . . . oh, I dunno — well, gay marriage.”