HOMAGE TO A SALESMAN
New York Post
June 10, 2002
By JAMES GARDNER
http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/49914.htm

On an assignment from my editor, I went to see "L. Ron Hubbard, Images of a Lifetime," devoted to the controversial founder of the Church of Scientology.

It changed my mind. I now believe that L. Ron Hubbard is the greatest man who ever lived.

Just kidding! That breathless reverence, however, captures the glitzy, almost servile reverence of the show, which, through photos and hyperventilating captions, seeks to detail the life of Scientology's founder.

An avid photographer, Hubbard is also represented by photos he shot himself, some of which are fairly good in a National Geographic kind of way.

Born of an almost insatiable passion for p.r., this show is as slick a piece of p.r. as you are likely to see - and you are encouraged to go for that reason if for no other.

You will learn, for example, that Ron (for he is always referred to as either Ron or Mr. Hubbard) was America's youngest Eagle Scout and that he won 20 merit badges - before the age of 12, I think it was.

You will see pictures of him traveling to exotic lands, images of him at his typewriter, of the early days of Scientology and some of the group's more recent community outreach programs.

There is something almost moving in Hubbard's all-American up-and-at-'em spirit. He honestly thought he could accomplish everything.

Finding fame as a sci-fi author, he is said to have written over 60 million words.

Not a modest man, he began his most famous, almost unreadable book, "Dianetics," with these words: "The creation of Dianetics is a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his invention of the wheel and arch."

Hubbard wrote those words around 1950, when science and men in white robes were considered the modern priests, so it was natural that the religious offshoot of his pseudodoxies should be called Scientology.

In the '70s that science collided with New Age sentiment, which explains why celebrities such as John Travolta and Kirstie Alley have sought therein some escape from the hollowness they may be presumed to feel.

Scientology assured them and all others that wealth, fame and happiness would soon be theirs.

And yet all of this is subverted by a video on view at the gallery:

Hubbard's hair is dyed and pomaded, his hands manicured, an ascot at his neck.

For all the world, he looks as if he would try to sell you aluminum siding.

I have read about him before and have never been able to crack this one, central mystery of the movement: How could so many people, so much cleverer and more refined than Hubbard, fall for his pseudo-religion?

Unfortunately, this is not the sort of exhibition to provide any answers.

L. RON HUBBARD The Church of Scientology, 227 W. 46th St. Through June 30.

Photos of L. Ron Hubbard give you the creeps, don't they?

The piggy, conniving toad-like eyes. The sallow skin. Even retouched, there is something unhealthy and unwholesome about the very face of the man. But it's the eyes that really give it all away. A poet once called the eyes the windows to the soul. Look into the eyes of L. Ron Hubbard and you may as well be looking into the vacuum of empty, dead space.

Most people have something in their eyes. There is nothing in the eyes of L.

Ron Hubbard but brute animal cunning, an intelligence that is not intelligent, a calculating look that is not wise but stupid and vicious. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, in the case of L. Ron Hubbard there is a "To Let" sign hanging there.

That isn't the sole disturbing aspect of this evil face. There are also the piggy jowls, the sense that no matter how well-scrubbed he was for his publicity photographs, there was still something unclean lurking beneath the skin and going deep inside. Something greasy, something vile.

Tell me you can look into the eyes of L. Ron Hubbard and see anything other than a brutal con-artist. Listen to his voice on the tapes, trying to sound distinguished and educated as if he weren't just the conniving con-artist child of low-born peasants. Who was he trying to fool with that fake pseudo-British Hah-vuhd-ish imitation accent? He couldn't even pronounce "galaxy" correctly, proncouncing it guh-LAX-ee. This was not a smart man.

This was a creepy-looking weird dude. I'm sure some of you reading this have a photograph or a bust of Hubbard nearby to look at it. Tell me you can seriously look at L. Ron Hubbard and see something besides a con-artist.

Look deep, deep into the eyes of the Hubbard. What do you see? A saint? A genius?

Or do you get a skin-crawling creepy feeling like a spider scurrying across your face in the dead of night?

Many ex-Scientologists have admitted after prodding that even while they were under the spell, they wouldn't look too long at pictures of L. Ron Hubbard because they gave them the creeps. Those piggy, priggish eyes that stare slyly, like a predator about to strike. Those well-fed jowls and slack, sallow skin, not the jowls of a jolly fat man but of an unclean man nourished on evil food and worse chemicals. The pursed mouth and inquiring eyes of the con-artist, thinking "How much of what I'm saying do you really believe? How much can I get away with? When will you, too, wise up and leave, and how do I keep you quiet when you go?"

All this, and more, is writ large on the face of L. Ron Hubbard.

Can you read it?

Take a look at that photo of L. Ron Hubbard and think, hard.

If you dare.

If you aren't afraid of what you'll see.

ptsc

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