It’s Come to This
“This Atlantic Brought to You By Scientology,” Jonah Goldberg notes at the Corner:
Everyone in the magazine business needs to have a bit of a “there but for the grace of God go I” attitude when it comes to keeping the lights on. But it seems to me some advertising just isn’t worth it. Exhibit A: The lavish fake article the Church of Scientology has taken out in The Atlantic under the heading “Sponsor content.”
As I said, “Old Media Belatedly Discovers That Elections Have Consequences”‘ the moribund Obamaconomy is impacting the Atlantic as well. (And for a bit of synchronicistic schadenfreude, check out the first quote in that post and where it ran.) In the midst of an astonished round-up from both sides of the aisle, Twitchy notes that even Atlantic writers are feeling, well, rather twitchy about their publication today:
Indeed. Much more on the Wright’s book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief, in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, and from the start of the year, a New York Times article on how he researched the publication, which was spun-off this marathon 26-page New Yorker piece from 2011. A writer at Yahoo News posits, “It appears the Atlantic advertorial is part of a preemptive strike by the church ahead of the book’s publication, which is slated for Thursday.”
Update (9:50 PM PST): Going Clear? As of the time of this update, and after the bipartisan negative reaction (see the Twitchy link above), the Atlantic has now pulled the advertorial, replacing it with an otherwise blank page that states, “We have temporarily suspended this advertising campaign pending a review of our policies that govern sponsor content and subsequent comment threads.” But Business Insider has a screen cap of the ad — formatted to look very much like just another Atlantic article, if you’re interested: “Here’s The Atlantic’s Sponsored Article On Scientology That Twitter Is Going Insane About.”
More: From Ed Morrissey, in a Tuesday update at Hot Air: “Atlantic: Sorry about that Scientology ad.” The Atlantic admits, “We screwed up. It shouldn’t have taken a wave of constructive criticism — but it has — to alert us that we’ve made a mistake, possibly several mistakes.”
Well, yes. But then, the brand has been rather tarnished for some time now before this latest clusterfark.
Why not simply “sell out to the Qatari oil sheikhs,” Stacy McCain asks. It’s the environmentalist-approved way to go green!
This 1940 prediction of American society in 2012 is scary close to reality;
Our universe is not Heinlein’s worst-case scenario, but is close enough that
the story should be a warning of where we are, and where we might go next.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94
What’s the big deal? Sure, they’re a bunch of menacing, venal loons, but they’re hardly the only such in Hollyweird, and their money is green.
Just don’t hand them a piece of the mag.
Oooh, now I think I’ll check out the book, after I shop at Hobby Lobby and eat dinner at Chick-Fil-A.
What’s the diff? Ta-Nehesi Coates articles at The Atlantic are all anti-white ads for the NAACP.
Thanks Ed, for a bit of glorious irony.
The author of Dianetics and founder of Scientology was a first order Charlatan, but only after being a prolific author of mediocre fiction (I enjoyed many of his Space Westerns as an adolescent) and shameless self promoter.
I’m not shocked that some are foolish enough to swallow his drivel, but admit to some surprise at the number of followers of the sham faith and that some folks that have been quite successful were duped.
Best Regards,
Is it just me or does the Church of Scientology behave EXACTLY like a secret government agency would.
Legions of lawyers, extortion, blackmail, indoctrination – sounds a lot like a CIA operation gone bizarro, don’t it?
You would think that an organization that behaves so egregiously would attract the attention of at least ONE politically ambitious D.A. over the course of fifty or so years.
Yet, everyone in government looks the other way.
Hmmmm….