MEDIA WATCH | BOSTON GLOBE

If Billy Joel is the Donald Trump of pop, then…

Your article illustrates very well the lengths people will go to to generate clicks by hitching their wagon to famous names in the news, regardless of how tenuous the comparison.

28 March 2017

Boston Globe
Dorchester, MA 02125

Dear Mr. Beam,

This concerns your article “If Billy Joel is the Donald Trump of pop, then…”

Your article illustrates very well the lengths people will go to to generate clicks by hitching their wagon to famous names in the news, regardless of how tenuous the comparison. Sometimes, though, the aim is not merely shameless self-promotion. Sometimes there is a more sinister motive.

For example, the source of the allusion in your column concerning the leader of the Church of Scientology was Tom DeVocht. Information published by the Church of Scientology shows that DeVocht was dismissed from the Church and expelled in 2005 after it was uncovered that he had wasted parishioner funds due to his gross mismanagement, lies and coverups of a renovation project he was in charge of. Since 2009 he has been trying to stir up prejudice against the Church and its leader by shopping baseless allegations to the press. He is a hater, pure and simple. His relationship with the truth is tenuous at best. In one moment of candor, he wrote:

“Lying to the most important people on earth was not an overt [transgression] unless I was caught out and couldn’t lie my way out of it.”

See http://www.whoistomdevocht.com/

Ultimately, DeVocht was caught and, as I said above, expelled from the religion a dozen years ago.

He doesn’t speak for me, nor for the millions of people in the world helped by Scientology and the religion’s leader.

I am sure that your message was political and not religious, but the result was to perpetuate DeVocht’s cynical attempt to manufacture prejudice against Scientologists by spreading more of his lies.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,
Catriona McKenzie
Ontario, Calif.