A young woman, selling advertising for the magazine I edited some decades ago, asked one morning for a private meeting. It developed that she was a Scientologist, aiming to recruit me.
She explained that working with a Scientology practitioner had greatly enhanced her self-esteem. Moreover, she would later learn how to cure the common cold. She acknowledged that Scientology had critics, but they could be dismissed. One journalist had written an attack but Scientology had exposed him as a former member, spiteful over rejection.
Ever since then I’ve followed the relationship between the media and this famously loony cult (which at certain times has included friends or colleagues of mine). I thought about my would-be recruiter when reading The Apostate: Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology, a 25,000-word article by Lawrence Wright in the current New Yorker .