There's nothing in
Behar's 1991 TIME article about points on the Bridge and the EP of each. You probably just got it confused with another article where that is mentioned, and there is certainly a lot of exposure of that on the Internet.
What the Behar TIME article did so well was open with the devastating story of a college student, Noah Lottick, who jumped to his death clutching the only money he had left, having been squeezed of what he had by the Church. It was not only good at drawing the reader in, it showed how a young person's involvement with Scientology can have devastating consequences, including for family and friends of that person. Further down, it mentions that when Noah's father went to investigate what was going on after his son's death, he found Noah had left money on account at the org for courses he hadn't taken yet:
True to form, the cult even haggled with the Lotticks over $3,000 their son had paid for services he never used, insisting that Noah had intended it as a "donation."
Isn't that just like Scientology, to have the balls to do something like that?The article also mentions the story of Harriet Baker, a 73 year old widow Scientology screwed out of tens of thousands of dollars, with the promise of Scientology helping her to overcome the grief of losing her husband. She ended up losing her house because she spent so much on Scientology.
My point is that with either of these stories, many Scientologists should be able to relate to that, how they were regged of money at a certain time, or how someone they knew in Scientology was regged this way, maybe with a gang visit to the home, and therefore perhaps they might think other things in the article are true also.
I am not an ex-member so the money squeeze never happened to me. I was just lucky. I read where one member explained once how her parents made her read Miller's Barefaced Messiah, as a condition of them funding further Scientology courses. She couldn't read it. A voracious reader, and someone who really ate up Dianutty when she first stumbled into that in her teen years, she was so full of fear of the entheta, that while her eyes scanned the words on the pages, she was at the same time blocking it all out as untrue. It wasn't even reaching her mind.
With the TIME article, the few active Scientologists who read it, probably focus on a few phrases they don't like or agree with and then just blank on the rest. Scientology is good at making people do that, until they come to a point where they are totally fed up with something. Then they are ready to actually read about both sides.
Anyway, I really liked your anecdote about first seeing the TIME article on the stand though, about how you thought it was pro-Scientology and got excited seeing the volcano.
One barrier to getting your book published may be that publishers get nervous when they read stories which involve celebrities. It's okay for Leah Remini to tell anecdotes about TC because she was a celebrity herself, and as a publisher they saw enough money in her book that it makes doing all the legal clearing of material worth it for them.
I don't think they balk at the stories of people like Amy Scobee or Scientologists who were in contact with celebrities through their work.
I can sympathize with how difficult it is to write about personal things, and feel that exposure. Leah's book is so personal and self-critical, that it ends up being a major strength. She mentions why she made it that way, so it would leave no dirt for Scientology to attempt to uncover or use against her.
It's easier to write a book when you're in your 60s or more and your parents are dead, and a lot of people who knew you are dead.
One thing I thought of in your account here was how for some Scientologists, like if you are friends with celebrities or a minor celebrity yourself, it's so different when you are young, at least, being welcomed into people's houses, and sometimes they even help pay for courses.
A friend of mine came from pretty difficult circumstances financially, and she wanted to become an actress in Hollywood. After she graduated from college, she headed to Hollywood to give acting her best try. She was smart, hard working (she worked every year she was in college as a full-time student), young and beautiful. Her main job in Hollywood for years was as a waitress.
She shared a tiny house in Hollywood with an older industry (non-acting side) person who became her best friend and mentor, and after years of classes, hundreds of auditions, working as an extra, and getting minor parts here and there but never breaking in, she became a Production Assistant, which is a low paying job which involves scraping tape off the stage, picking people up from the airport or whatever.
It gave her experience though, and she worked on a hit series, took the exam to get in the Director's Training Program and was one of the few chosen. From there, she became a successful Assistant Director. She met a man in the technical side of the industry, they married, and are now happily retired.
Anyway, during that whole time living and working in Hollywood, she never once got sucked into Scientology. A friend of hers had a play produced at the Scientology CC and she went to that, but that's about it. She knew the courses got expensive the higher you got, and that it was a trap, and I think because her roommate knew so many people in the industry, and she knew some stars, she didn't feel she needed it for connections.