Read Scientology spokesman Ben Shaw’s latest freakout over the Tampa Bay Times
Tampa Bay Times reporter Tracey McManus had another terrific piece yesterday about Scientology’s stranglehold on the downtown of Clearwater, Florida, a city the church surreptitiously invaded in 1975 and has said it wants to turn into the first “Scientology city.”
Scientology’s presence in the downtown has long been a major concern for city leaders trying to bring some life to the district, and now a major new step forward will be taken as a new amphitheater opens this weekend.
But as McManus explained in her thorough backgrounder on how the city reached this point, Scientology is still holding up the development of parcels of land in downtown that were purchased just since 2017.
We’ve helped explain that this is largely a result of church leader David Miscavige’s tantrum over his inability to get his hands on a tiny parcel of land near Scientology’s holiest spot, the Fort Harrison Hotel.
For her piece McManus reached out multiple times to spokesman Ben Shaw to get Scientology’s side of the story.
And Shaw did not disappoint.
We have obtained three letters that Shaw wrote to McManus and copied to the city (which is why they’re public and we got our hands on them). We think that, once again, you will enjoy Ben’s creative use of typefaces in order to express his outrage. And also, you just have to see Shaw burst a blood vessel over vice mayor Mark Bunker.
Shaw also sent along a number of photos of David Miscavige that he wanted the Tampa Bay Times to use, so we thought we’d throw him a bone and use one of them (see above).
We also really enjoyed Shaw’s screeching about the fact that Scientology TV is a network, not just a streaming service, and don’t you forget it!
(One of the things that really seemed to set off Shaw was that McManus had learned that Scientology has been claiming that it is restoring three buildings on Cleveland Street, but she found that only one of them has a permit for construction.)
Please let us know what part of Ben’s tantrum tickled you the most.
Here’s letter #1, from June 16…
Here’s letter #2, from June 18…
And here’s letter #3, from June 20…
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Bah, insufficient number of exclamation points. Not enough to convey the tone-40 communication from defendant David “he is NOT insane!” Miscavige.
All that butt hurt needs some serious Preparation H. That 2014 ULI 'report' was a very bad joke, paid for and entirely in the Clampires favor. You get what you paid for. And no one outside of the CO$ has paid any attention to it.
Ben Shaw's straw man arguments are worthy of $cientologies previous PR pronouncements. But where is Karin Pouw? Between the 'nah nah you lie' and 'nah nah you lie more' crap, Ben sounds like a petulant 4 year old.
Tracy McManus has again been a burr under the saddle of the $cieno horse for quite a while. She took over that beat from Tobin and Childs and has done excellent work outing the actions of $cientology. That poor horse, it been ridden hard and put away wet too many times.