I just finished reading the blog Gothamist 'Duncan and Blake's Final Days' article of August 9, 2007 by Jen Carlson.
Despite ending the article with Glenn O'Brien's eloquent final words on Duncan's blog, The Wit of the Staircase, Carlson's article seems to me to be just more of the same propaganda being used recently to slander the late Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake as being "paranoid".
"Most agree, however, that the accusations, lawsuit and blame being placed on others - all came from a place of paranoia." says Carlson, followed by more quoted slander from The Observer. But is that true? Not really.
In the first and only report from the Washington Post about the Blake and Duncan matters, ' The Puzzling, Tragic End of A Golden Couple ' we read the first and only media comment made by the family:
"Obviously there was much more going on than any of us realized, but he never said anything that suggested there was a problem," said Anne Schwartz Delibert, Jeremy Blake's mother and Theresa Duncan's mother-in-law. "He was devoted to her. He was a loyal caretaker."
Anne Schwartz Delibert is a licensed professional mental health counselor specializing in marriage and family counseling, her office information available on the internet as practicing in the Silver Spring, MD & DC area.
How could Blake's own mother not see the symptoms of paranoia suggested by so many anonymous twits, supposid colleagues friends and in articles like this one. All this beginning the day Jeremy Blake was officially identified as deceased? At the top of the list we find the vengful Kate Coe, scrambling to wherever she can post a derogatory comment whilst no one can post a comment on her blog piece nor the Media Bistro plug and the LA Times piece she co-oped with the very misinformed writer, Chris Lee
As another commentor on the Washington Post article stated "Could it be that these "friends" claiming the couple were mentally unbalanced were not really friends at all and that this is just a seized opportunity for the expression of resentment in a profession known for the potential for displaced envy?"
It's worse than that. I think it's is an outright smear campaign. I am not alone in thinking this. The onslaught of rabid comments is so intense that I suspect many real friends are still shaking their heads trying to digest it and formulate some semblence of truth out of it all.
Interestingly, The Church of Scientology is renowned for treating their enemies to just that kind of smear campaign. But of course, "they were paranoid"... right?
Read the case of Robert W. Welkos, who was harassed shortly before the Los Angeles Times published a comprehensive series on the Church of Scientology he'd co-written with Times staff writer, Joel Sappell. http://www.rickross.com/reference/scientology/scien384.html
Or try comprehending the horrors writer Paul Brachi had to endure after his expose of Scientology was published in the UK DailyMail:
'Tom Cruise's Church of hate tried to destroy me'by PAUL BRACCHI -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=455886&in_page_id=1879
Paulette Cooper's story is true and verified, yet she was smeared as a terrorist and labeled as mentally unstable until she convinced a judge and jury by willingly being questioned while under 'truth serum'. Several years later an FBI raid of the church found documents that proved the church had set her up.
http://www.xenu-directory.net/critics/cooper1.html
Paulette Cooper spoke up recently in an article for the New York Press Club telling even more details than was contained in her a book written over 30 years ago. Slate Magazine did a review of it:
Writer: I Was Stalked by Scientologists
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/06/writer-i-was-stalked-by-scientologists.php#more
You can & should read the complete article from The New York Press Club's Byline:
Looking over my shoulder,The Inside Account of the Story That Almost Killed Me
The Scandal of the Scandal of Scientology
Saturday, June 23, 2007 By Paulette Cooper
http://www.lermanet.com/paulette-cooper/index.htm
When Time Magazine writer RICHARD BEHAR wrote ' Scientology, Thriving Cult of Greed and Power 1991 - (c) Time Magazine, he and others were sued and harassed. Hear his experience as a victim of Scientology's 'Fair Game' Tactics as he discusses it for the first time upon receiving the 1992 LEO J. RYAN award for Cult Awareness http://www.lermanet.com/scientologyscandals/behar.htm
There are many more ordinary and extraordinary people who were made to suffer personal and familial harassment that looking over their shoulder became a way of life for a time. Each one would not hesitate to suggest that it's quite possible Blake and Duncan were being stalked and harassed by the Church of Scientology. Besides, how can a mother NOT know her child is 'paranoid'? Especially one educated in mental illness?
The wolves are out in droves, devouring the reputations of two talented people who deserve better. They claimed the Scientologists were harassing them. They were not alone in claiming to be a target of what is known as Scientology's practice of Fair Game tactics. Let's hope truth reigns after the pack settles down.
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9 comments:
Dear FF,
Please realize that there is a serious problem with your hypothesis.
All of the people you have listed as being attacked and harassed by the CoS wrote exposés on the CoS.
This is what is missing in the TD/JB story. Theresa did not do an investigative report on the CoS. She did not devote a lot of space on her blog to attacks on the CoS.
In short, from the point of view of people like you and me, who had no connection with TD/JB, the reports of their alleged harassment seem to have no inciting incident.
Without further evidence, your listing of those other victims of CoS harassment simply has no bearing on what happened with TD/JB. Please save your energy for verifiable instances of CoS harassment.
What is my hypothesis? I have provided no hypothesis. I have only begun to write about a public relations campaign that evades and contrasts against one glaring contradiction and against a history of claims similar to Duncan and Blake.
This particular blog article is just the beginning of what I will be writing about this couple and their stated claims. I have posed a serious question that seems to be purposely overlooked by the media reports. This is one questions at I have come to find based upon information I have researched.
I think you jumped the gun in presuming I formed a hypothesis.
(I posed a serious question, which you also failed to answer.)
I am not even finished compiling the information I've obtained in my research and investigation. I am not only doing this for my own desire to to know the truth - I am doing this for the true friends of this couple who have been shocked into dismay at not only the loss of a loved one, but by the vengence displayed by people who claim to know the couple as being "paranoid". That is not a word you'll hear from their real friends and close family members.
There is much more going on to make the decent people in their lives sufficiently confused. Who is expert in creating that kind of effect? People with a vested interest. It takes much more effort on the part of others to go out of their way to make comments of a negative nature, especially while posting as 'anonymous ' or as a fringe 'friend ' than it is to reserve comment or post positive and truthful things against the tide of defamation.
You have jumped the gun in presuming I've "had no connection" to this couple. And whether or not I had a connection is irrelevent, as I am not making claims of communications that cannot be substanciated. I also don't think you read all that Theresa wrote about CoS. You suggest that there is a lack of an "inciting incident" but you base that on the little which you seem to know.
Look for my future articles which may help you see that free speech and a few connections who object to what is freely being stated are all it takes to become a target to make silent.
Dear FF,
Your hypothesis is implicit. By devoting half of your blog entry to a list of people who have been harassed, hounded and hunted by the CoS, you're suggesting that Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake weren't paranoid and that journalism to the contrary is forming a smear campaign designed to discredit the late couple's accusations.
Let's assume for the sake of the discussion that every person you listed was, in fact, a targeted victim of the CoS. I accept that and don't doubt it.
Now, can you do the same? Can you, just for a moment, suspend your own disbelief and imagine that Duncan and Blake were, in fact, obsessed with the idea that they were being persecuted by the CoS, when in fact the CoS couldn't care less about them?
Is it possible for you to imagine that the CoS was, in effect, a random group for them to hang their paranoia on, and if it had been several decades ago it could have easily been Communists, or Jews, or Masons?
You've got to realize that if this is so, it does not mean that the CoS does not harass people, or that the fair play or fair game policy or whatever it is called does not exist. It just means in this case these people were not attacked by the CoS--they latched onto it as a type of LA-omnipresent bogeyman.
Peace!
"I am doing this for the true friends of this couple who have been shocked into dismay at not only the loss of a loved one, but by the vengence displayed by people who claim to know the couple as being 'paranoid'. That is not a word you'll hear from their real friends and close family members."
Why do you assume that none of Theresa or Jeremy's real friends or close family members would describe them as paranoid? Have you asked all of them? Or are you merely assuming that anyone who would describe them that way couldn't possibly be a "real" friend or a "close" family member?
You haven't said anything to convince me that you know more about Theresa and Jeremy than anyone else I've seen writing about them. If you knew them, why not say so?
I know that the CoS harasses people they feel are a threat. I am still waiting for evidence that Theresa and Jeremy posed any threat to the CoS. I don't deny that they could have, but I am not going to assume that they must have. They also alleged that they were being harassed or at least interfered with by a number of individuals. Do you assume those allegations were true, too, or just the ones about the CoS?
Sorry, my comment wasn't coming up right.
Found your blog from your comment on Billy Ocean, Student Council Treasurer where I author. Don't know if you read it, but I did a post there about a different facet of the Blake/Duncan incident.
Sadly, they were definitely paranoid and delusional, as friends and family have readily said. Does that mean that the CoS wasn't hassling them? No. I'd say it's pretty 50/50, and we'll probably never know. They definitely did have some contact with Scientologists before (Blake did some artwork for one of Beck's albums).
Your Anonymous poster here sure does use some CoS denial tactics, huh? Interesting.
And while I usually make fun of anyone who gets into Scientology, I save some respect for those who do but then get out. Good for you. Keep up the good work.
Do any of you guys know where I can find Blake and Duncan's 27 page lawsuit that they wrote? I want to read it for myself.
Thanks,
H
Thank you for this blog entry.
In 2006 I was recruited by deception into a cult-like group pretending to be anti-war leftists. When I discovered they were a front for right wing propaganda, they tried to use "fair game" tactics to control and discredit my experiences.
I was lucky. Through a friend I met and started working with the Anonymous collective just as they were taking on Scientology in 2008. As a result I understood the tactics and psychology of control behind them, and was better able to defend myself.
If only Theresa and Jeremy understood how the cult worked, maybe they would be alive today.
I personally suspect Theresa was murdered. Jeremy might have been crippled crippled by grief and turned to suicide, but I doubt it. Hopefully new investigations will reveal more facts.
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