Is this the lamest tabloid ‘Tom Cruise has left Scientology’ speculation ever?

You’ll have to forgive us that we didn’t get to this sooner, because we were just out of surgery and lying rather helpless in a hospital bed last week when the Daily Mail’s entertainment gossip columnist Alison Boshoff “reported” that Tom Cruise has stopped going to Scientology’s UK headquarters for the past three years.

We really couldn’t say anything while every tabloid organization on the planet then jumped in with two feet and began declaring that Cruise has defected from Scientology.

Come on, people. Not again.

Every year or two the tabloids do this, and we know they want so badly for this story to be true.

This time, for some reason, the wave of declarations by irresponsible rags became quite a tsunami as an initial story speculating that perhaps Tom has stopped flying a helicopter into East Grinstead was somehow proof that he’d ditched Scientology.

It isn’t, of course. If Boshoff had bothered to call up even a single former top Scientology executive, someone like Mike Rinder, for example, she might have understood that Tom Cruise’s relationship with Scientology leader David Miscavige and his dedication to Scientology has nothing whatsoever to do with whether he’s been to Saint Hill, the UK headquarters, lately. (And yes, that’s true even though Tom has been spending a lot of time in the UK in general.)

“These stories are not written by actual journalists,” Mike pointed out when we asked him if any of the publications breathlessly announcing that Cruise was stepping away had bothered to ask him about it. “At best they are ‘written’ by low-level freelancers who dig through and regurgitate anything they can find with celebrity names attached. At worst, they are planted stories by the Cruise/Paramount PR people to try to keep him out of the Scientology spotlight as it hurts the box office.”

We know it’s difficult for people to understand, but Cruise is not some captive in Scientology. He’s a true believer. He actually believes that L. Ron Hubbard is the greatest human being who ever lived and that David Miscavige is the most important human being alive today.

“Tom Cruise worships David Miscavige like a god,” we were once told by Jean Brousseau, a man who had been Miscavige’s brother-in-law for 16 years and worked closely with both of them.

We know that Cruise has stepped back from the vocal role he had as Scientology’s spokesman that he took on for a few months in 2005, and his general silence is what encourages these silly stories from the tabloids.

So we have to look at actual evidence where we can, and it has become more difficult since the pandemic hit. But just before that, at the last October IAS gala in East Grinstead in 2019, not only did Cruise attend, but he brought along his daughter Isabella and son Connor for the first time, implying that if anything, Tom’s dedication was stronger than ever.

No, there’s no evidence that Tom is “stepping away,” and whether or not he visits the Saint Hill compound (where his pal Miscavige is not spending any time anyway), really doesn’t say anything.

And please, the next time the tabloids start making these announcements, examine the stories to see if they’ve even bothered to reach out to former execs like Mike Rinder or Claire Headley to get some understanding of Cruise and Scientology before they go off.

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Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

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