(Written before he landed himself in the pokey for the prostitute fisticuffs…am I psychic or am I psychic?)
Dear Mr. Offer,
Last week, I made the decision to terminate my relationship with cable television. The pain was excruciating as cable television and I shared a common dream for the last twenty-nine years. We wanted to be entertained at all times with Roseanne reruns, teleplays about Hitler’s bunker, and an entire channel devoted to Headbanger’s Ball. However, our delightful folie à deux became a terrifying ménage a trois when you entered our relationship by peddling your two useless products: the “ShamWow!” and the “Slap Chop.”
The human spirit is by nature inquisitive, Mr. Offer, thus I did not readily dismiss your overtures without a little intellectual footwork. It appears, sir, that prior to ham-handedly forcing your gadgets upon us, you penned a film, cleverly-titled, “Underground Comedy Movie.” Oh, and you SUED THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY.
When I learned this, Mr. Offer, I was on your side. In fact, I would have followed you to the ends of our battlefield, earth, wearing nothing but a loin cloth made out of ShamWows and indiscriminately mashing our foes with the Slap Chop. Errantly, I assumed you were some crazy freedom fighter opposing a religion that foists upon its members a doctrine of wealth entitlement and anti-psychological claptrap masquerading as science.
Forgotten imagist poet, Allen Upward, first coined the term “scientology” albeit in a pejorative manner, as “science elevated to unquestioning doctrine”. L. Ron Hubbard apparently didn’t read Upward’s book when sitting in his living room, crafting a religion based on personality audits, thetans, and the existence of our souls on other planets. Hubbard also eschewed the trajectory of ontology by forgetting that men like Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer attempted nearly the same thing and they were eventually, and rightfully, dismissed as quacks.
A bit of a litigious fellow you are, Mr. Offer. You also sued the Farrelly brothers because you claimed intellectual property rights over the use of human ejaculate as a grooming aid. You sued the late Anna Nicole Smith for failing to appear in your film. While those cases were dismissed, I find your suit against Scientology far more fascinating. You were a member of the church and, based on your “Underground Comedy Movie”, their governing body deemed you a “declared suppressive” which is their term for an “enemy of Scientology.”
In order to shed some light on this trial, I quote from your own release on PR Wire:
“This court was run by four scientology church staff members, the youngest being about 14 years of age, and in March of 1998, a ruling document entitled “Findings and Recommendations,” held Offer to be guilty of 23 charges, none of which were ever presented to him in the “court.” To add insult to injury, the ruling document labeled him a “Declare Type B,” a Scientology term which means
a person who is a “Criminal” and has “a criminal record.” This was publicly distributed or communicated to all associates, future associates of Offer and general Scientology members, thereby sealing his fate as an outcast.”
My eyes welled up with sympathetic tears and I almost offered you the wise words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Then something occurred to me. How much of a Mount Vesuvius-sized asshole must you be for the Scientologists to want nothing to do with you? To put this into perspective, sir, I took one of their “personality audits” completely loaded on blow and Old Granddad and I scored so abysmally low (and accidentally left my actual phone number)that one of their “youth outreach” people called me every day for a year just to make sure I was okay. I, Mr. Offer, am a complete liability to any religion and they’d still have me!
The signs were there. Your ridiculous double entendre did not escape me. “You’re gonna love my nuts!” you proclaim mere moments before asserting that children can use your product with just one finger. I’ve loved many nuts in my life, Mr. Offer, and I assure you I will never love yours. And you look directly at me when you state, while squeezing the Shamwow!, that “The Germans always make good stuff.” Like what? Zyklon B? Fuck you, too, Vince.
Cleansing my thetans,
Esther
Fake it 'til you make it 