Jon Stewart interviewed biggest-movie-star-in-the-world Tom Cruise Tuesday as part of the latter's promotional tour for his new movie Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, and curiously neglected to bring up the sensitive topic of Scientology, The Atlantic reports.
On The Daily Show, Stewart - whom millennials consider the most trusted news figure in America - joked with and kowtowed to Cruise, discussing the star's exercise regimen, diet, shampoo-commercial hair, and other bland topics - everything but Cruise's connection to the controversial Hollywood cult of Scientology.
As The Atlantic notes,
In April, HBO broadcast Alex Gibney’s documentary Going Clear, a film based on the book of the same title by Lawrence Wright exploring the Church of Scientology, of which Cruise is a high-profile member. The movie alleges, among other things, that the actor personally profited from slave labor (church members who were paid 40 cents an hour to outfit the star’s airplane hangar and motorcycle), and that his former girlfriend, the actress Nazanin Boniadi, was punished by the Church by being forced to do menial work after telling a friend about her relationship troubles with Cruise. For Cruise “not to address the allegations of abuse,” Gibney said in January, “seems to me palpably irresponsible.”
Cruise has still made no official response to Going Clear, which was recently nominated for seven Emmy Awards. During the media tour for Rogue Nation, not a single interviewer has asked him a question that in any way deviates from the approved topics regarding the film...
The allegations about Scientology in the movie are numerous, but the most serious of them charge that the church operates a prison camp of sorts called the Rehabilitation Project Force, keeps blackmail files based on auditing records from its high-profile congregants, and isolates members from their friends and family, often forcing them to “disconnect” from people who disapprove of the Church or leave it. (The organization has repeatedly denied that any of this is true.)
At the very least, Cruise is the highest-profile advocate for an institution that’s been repeatedly charged with human-rights abuses over the past few decades. If Wright and Gibney’s accounts are accurate, he’s the second most-powerful person in Scientology, and he’s completely insulated from even the most irreverent television personalities in the country asking him questions about it...
Tom Cruise as an institution depends on a degree of complicity between the people who profit from his movies and the people who pay to see them, with everyone involved agreeing not to ask too many tough questions and ruin the fun. The fact that reporters and television entertainers also buy into this deal is disappointing, even if it isn’t ultimately so surprising.
So much for Stewart and the rest of the media speaking truth to power.
