I agree about the desperation. CoS is melting from the Internet being poured on it. And from the beginning it has suffered from the delicate balance of trying to maintain secrets while still reaching out and appearing to be relevant, if not something extraordinary with superpowerz on top.
I can think of two other incidents which are examples of this, similar to things you mentioned. One was Hubbard demonstrating the attributes of a "clear" to the public. Another was DM and Tom Cruise's plan to make a splash with Tom's anti-psych drug statements. Hubbard never attempted that again, and Tom Cruise is no longer talking about Scientology to the public. It seems like it's almost forbidden, like talking about Xenu. Primarily, he's probably afraid about it affecting his box office. In so many words, I bet Tom has told Miscavige, no more birthday parties or special medals either. They're going to take over the planet one ideal org at a time, until there are no street corners left which do not have an ideal org.
And talking about desperation, the whole Marty thing may be small potatoes compared to DM's anxiety over actually getting a TV station running. The programming could backfire so badly. Will he really want to see clips of it out there on YouTube, like news vloggers show clips of Pat Robertson?
Marty's videos trying to discredit GOING CLEAR or Leah's show are like trying to put out the sun with a bucket of crazy water, so I don't think that's what it was really about.
Right! Tom is another perfect example of what happens when you try to take on the role of spokesperson. This is why they must lean so heavily on front groups - not to just safepoint the environment and establish beach heads into institutions - it’s because Scientology itself is toxic kryptonite.
I think in later years LRH must have presented a very poor personal appearance, obese, bad teeth, a chain smoker. He would have been a visual example of duplicity. He is making everyone else run around in rubberized suits and baking in saunas but did he ever do this himself out there in the La Quinta or Hemet desert? The Way to Happiness tells everyone to take care of their teeth but is he only telling us this now because he regrets neglecting his own so badly? He liked to surround himself with beautiful people. Ex-CMO guys, tell me I’m wrong - that there was no beautiful people criteria for selecting Messengers. The pinnacle of Scientology was supposed to portray an image of vitality and perfection that LRH himself could not live up to.
It is this duplicity problem that handicaps Scientology spokespeople. Scientologists are supposed to be advanced, sophisticated, above the fray, composed and exuding serenity of beingness. Tommy’s in-your-face spittle fest might have been in perfect form per the OSA playbook but it didn’t comport with public expectation.
DM didn’t come across on Nightline as someone in control and confidant of their position - he came across as defensive, offended, manipulative and dominating. He alone sets the tone for OSA and so it is that OSA is all these things and OSA is quite literally Scientology PR so whenever they do what they do it looks bad.
Scientology exists in a kind of continually resetting time loop where everything must be forgotten within 5 years. At least that is one of the lessons I took away from my time in the Sea Org. I thought the massive RPF evolution in the late 70s was unique, a desperate response to desperate times. We were under attack by the great conspiracy. This was the Church’s version of the Inquisition, an aberration, and eventually LRH and the higher ups would do a data analysis and figure out what was going on and everything would be fixed. Scientology would become the shining civilization on the hill - never happened. Now we know they did this on the ships at the first opportunity LRH felt he had enough control to get away with it. It must have been frustrating to have to wait so long until he could throw people in the chain locker, over board and into the bilge. Then comes the Hole. This was Scientology, it's own self realization of potential, the ability for one man to crush another without restraint. If you change enough posts, transfers, disappear people to the RPF or meekly doing some subservient lower conditions, without access to outside information, no one is allowed to talk about the things that don’t make sense, ethics orders blame everything on someone else, texts advices policies and history are constantly shredded and revised, the fine art of reinterpreting statistics to support PR or rationalize punishment is institutionalized - it becomes a real life version of Dark City where reality and expectations constantly reset.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_City_(1998_film)
Scientology Media Productions presents a serious dilemma for DM. He has to know that it just is not possible to make any kind of public statement about Scientology that can’t be fact checked in a way to make them look bad. Just look at the Superbowl ads. What a bunch of mealy mouthed mush. You can keep that up for 60 seconds but to maintain ongoing TV programming, yeah right! I think SMP is and always was never going to amount to much more than an upgrade for Freedom Magazine (read: Scientology Pravda) and OSA PR. If Marty is doing these vids in cooperation with the Church then it is probably coming out of SMP or with their people. This probably is the SMP programming that we have all been waiting for.
I don’t think it is possible for DM to not be obsessing over this. I think DM and Marty have taken up real estate in each other’s heads and because they both have so much dirt on each other they can’t let go and they can’t neutralize the other side. LRH micromanaged absolutely everything. How can we possibly expect that this would not be the case with DM? At least LRH could delegate by playing on people’s good nature to build loyalty and carefully utilizing their particular aptitudes. Sure he would eventually get around to crushing them and tossing them under the bus after sucking them dry but now it seems more like crush them first then use them for whatever they might be good at. But then again, maybe LRH would be envious to not have to be so diplomatic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Pfs2_WGcg