Another one bites the Dust...

The scourge of Scientology has claimed another one. It would appear that Will Smith has joined their scary nutbag ranks. I liked him, I must admit. One of those people who seemed really approachable and interesting, and though his acting was occasionally a little one-dimensional, he undeniably had talent (seen in Ali, for instance). Now he's Tom Cruise crazy.

The sceptical community is buzzing with this information - it's over at Skepchick as well. The message, I think, is twofold: first, we're in mourning over another loss to the world of Industrial Strength Crazy. Never a good thing to wake up to. Secondly, it's a public service announcement: treat anything that comes out of Will Smith's mouth as if it came out of Tom Cruise's. Because they're going to be spouting near-identical bullshit shortly, no doubt.

Speaking of which, here's a video[via] which the Scientologists ordered deleted from YouTube. It's the video for an award that Tom Cruise has won in the Church - apparently for getting the word out to over a billion people. There's not a lot of substance in the video (I admit I was hoping for him to start frothing at the mouth about the Big Alien Baddies that were coming to get him); in fact, he says very little. He continually repeats variations of the phrase "you're in or you're out", and there's a fair bit of Scary Maniacal Laughter™, but other than that he says virtually nothing through 9 straight minutes.

These people seriously give me the heebie-jeebies.