Comment on Apu sitting in the corner out of picture
TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 3 days agoI think you’re forgetting two key factors here: one is that he suffered a stroke in 2006 and didn’t really do much of ANY work after that. According to one of his 11 sons (holy shit my dude), Isaac Hayes III:
Isaac Hayes did not quit South Park; someone quit South Park for him. What happened was that in January 2006 my dad had a stroke and lost the ability to speak. He really didn’t have that much comprehension, and he had to relearn to play the piano and a lot of different things. He was in no position to resign under his own knowledge. At the time, everybody around my father was involved in Scientology — his assistants, the core group of people. So someone quit South Park on Isaac Hayes’ behalf. We don’t know who. My father was not that big of a hypocrite to be part of a show that would constantly poke fun at African-American people, Jewish people, gay people — and only quit when it comes to Scientology. He wouldn’t be that hypocritical.
Now whether you choose to believe all that or not is up to you, but the other key factor you forgot to consider is that Scientology IS a cult. From the limited amount of data we’ve been able to gleam from their internal workings, they have a habit of forcing their members to constantly push themselves beyond their limits, regardless of what any medical doctor would advise; because in their warped worldview, all faults or shortcomings, mental and physical, are all just the result of Thetans and can be overcome, regardless of the health of the individual. We have some anecdotes of people who have left with claims that the ‘Chirch’ would use typical cult behaviors that all amounted to increased control over their victims: borderline starvation, massive amounts of physical exercise to promote exhaustion, recontextualizing their worldview to make all this horseshit more acceptable, etc.
Anyway, my point is, Hayes died at the age of 65 after a recurrence of the previously mentioned stroke and was found lying on the floor next to a still-running treadmill. In my (unprofessional) opinion, Scientology killed him, simple as that. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was deliberate, nor that Hayes was ENTIRELY guilt-free (he did still join them initially), but the fact is that the last several years of his life were almost completely controlled for him and the people behind those decisions clearly put the CoS first and Hayes at a very distant second
MehBlah@lemmy.world 3 days ago
None of it was mentioned at the time. It seems more likely is revisionist history. Which is understandable since its originating from the family. I know what scientology is. As I know what a cult is. A cult is a small unpopular religion. A religion is a large popular cult. Which one hubbards brainfart low grade fantasy fiction falls under is debatable and redundant. He gave up his control and that is on him and only him. Blaming a MLM scheme hiding as a religion for a death is pointless since there was nothing that prevented him from breaking away as others have done.
TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 3 days ago
If you call that revisionist history, then what do you call the fact that immediately after his first stroke, his PR team (heavily associated with Scientology) tried to claim that he merely suffered from an episode of “high blood pressure and exhaustion” only for the truth to be revealed 6 months later that it was indeed a stroke?
Like I said in my initial comment, he did choose to join them on his own free will, so we’re in agreement there. But I also said that his last few years (i.e. everything post-'06 stroke) was controlled by the Scientologists when he was not in a position to tell them to fuck off, even if he wanted to (which admittedly, would be debatable). They saw an opening and ran with it, that was my point; you’re claiming that he willingly gave up all his autonomy and I simply don’t agree with that. Or at least he was not mentally sound enough to be able to do so, just like how putting rohypnol in someone’s drink doesn’t equal “yes means yes”
Simply because some have broken ties with the cult doesn’t mean that all members have the same options to break away as the fortunate few. ESPECIALLY if the majority of the people around him, those controlling his perception of the outside world, were actively trying to keep him in. A core fundamental philosophy from Hubbard himself was to draw in as many celebrities as possible for the express purpose of using them to prostelytize his works. Plus, and let’s be frank here, Hayes was not in the prime of his life anymore; he wasn’t so far gone as to be labeled “decrepit” or “on death’s door” at the time of his death, but even if he was living completely alone and didn’t have Church members constantly surrounding/influencing him, it’s hard to say whether or not he would’ve had the opportunity to leave.
I mean, come on man, the Church literally encourages members to “disconnect” with all aspects and people of their former lives who are not themselves members. It’s also pretty common knowledge that anyone who leaves is not only shunned by the organization (which, if the disconnection was effective) had been the basis for their entire lives for a long time by that point; they’re also contantly harassed, stalked, and occasionally threatened directly from still-current members. Even if those actions aren’t technically ordered to be done by the leaders, they still happen regularly without any condemnation or comment from the top brass. And this isn’t even getting into the multiple deaths they are DIRECTLY responsible for, or the fact that Shelly Miscavige (the wife of the current head of rhe Church) has not publicly been seen ANYWHERE by ANYONE since 2007. Or Operation Snow White in the 1970s where up to 5,000 individual members worked to get jobs in various branches of the US (and Canadian) government for the explicit and stated purpose of covering up Hubbard’s and the Church’s more controversial practices. If they can manage to pull all that shit off and still somehow get away without the most minor of consequences, I’m sure they can manage to draft the equivalent of a Termination of Emploment, convince a perpetually confused Isaac into signing it, and then sending it off to the South Park offices.
tl;dr You’re forgetting the most important single line from that episode of South Park:
MehBlah@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Like I said in the other comment since one comment just wouldn’t do. I see it differently. I know how a cult works. I know how a religion works. Its all pretty much the same.
I know how the world works and I know how things get retold to flatter someone especially posthumously.
I see nothing in that Wikipedia article to suggest anything other than revisionist history. Nothing.
TargaryenTKE@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Oh my bad, I wasn’t aware you knew everything about the entire world. You do know that revising history is a legitimate, academic practice and should be done when new information becomes available, right? If we only ever took the first accounting of an event and never went back to scrutinize it, then we would still all believe the US Civil War was fought by the South just wanting to defend themselves from the greedy North, or that that the USSR were the sole instigators/escalators of the Cold War, or that Napoleon was abnormally short. None of these statements are true, and it was only by going back and correcting our previous assumptions that we came to those conclusions.
Oh also, yeah there are a lot of similarities between cults and religions (and militaries for that matter, but let’s not make this even more messy) and I’m not really trying to defend either of them, but at least when I was being dragged to church as a kid, I wasn’t also forced to never speak to a non-believer again, or only eat bread and water for a week because I couldn’t list the 10 Commandments upon request, or something like that. Every Sunday morning sucked but you know what happened Sunday afternoon? I got to go home and live a normal life again without someone constantly checking on me to make sure I wasn’t
breaking the rulesin need of correction. You don’t get that freedom in most cults, especially not Scientology; I got to leave my situation without having to live in fear for the rest of my life, most of them don’t get that luxury