Chris Lee writes for The Los Angeles Times:
It’s been just eight days since rising art star Jeremy Blake was seen wandering into the ocean off New York’s Rockaway Beach — presumably to his death — a week after he discovered that his blogger-filmmaker girlfriend, Theresa Duncan, had taken her life in their East Village apartment.
But the apparent double suicide of this glamorous, intellectual couple has confounded and disturbed the art world in New York, London and Los Angeles, where they lived together for several years. Many were shocked by the turn of events while others noted that the couple had acted strangely in their final months together.
According to several friends and art world peers, the two believed they were being stalked and harassed by Scientologists, an abiding fear that soured old friendships and made some of their respective working relationships difficult.
Scam Sam emails:
When is [it] going to be a journalistic endeavor to seriously cover the effects of cultish thinking on those around it? The so-called "collateral damage": normal people forced to endure being around all these Scientologists, homeopaths, gurus, yogis, and other assorted new age "believers" – that society, the papers, and the media, accept and condone – while it’s most gullible citizens are driven to aggressively deny reality, morality, or any other social norms?
It’s too easy to take the word of Scientologists and others, regarding their actions, when they have a history of spiritual aggression and secrecy. And such groups have permeated every aspect of society – but to what end? Why does Oprah promote them? Why is anyone promoting them? What is the goal? And why are so few "intelligent" people asking the same question?
That’s what I want to know.
