Blog: The Great Middle Path Revisited - 2012-07-22
The Great Middle Path Revisited July 22, 2012,
For those new to the blog, I recommend an essay I posted almost three years ago titled The Great Middle Path redux. I discussed then the idea that the extreme sides of the Scientology spectrum in many ways reflect one another. The zealots on the Miscavige side and the 'critics' on the 'book burner' side nurture one another as convenient evils to make life combative enough to be interesting.
I once heard a pundit remark that probably the most straight, truthful news from the Middle East comes from the Al Jazeera news agency. He reckoned that based on an objective study of international news reportage on the region over a several year period. He cited as corroboration for that analysis the fact that Al Jazeera was the only news outfit in history to be bombed by both of the opposing sides of a military conflict.
If you check out the reader reviews on Amazon books for What Is Wrong With Scientology you will see that most who care to comment express strong feelings one way or the other about the book. A lot of people seem to either hate it or love it. Add to the mix both extremes of the Scientology spectrum. On the one side are the anti-Marty sites, authored and edited by David Miscavige. On the other side is the most prominent and persistent of Scientology ridiculers, Tony Ortega at the Village Voice.