The twisted legacy, tarnished legend of one L. Ron Hubbard – half con man, half tragic prankster, bombastic but vacuous minded preacher of empty sermons, two-bit peddler, bottler of poisonous, pseudo-religious bilge water – still persists among his legions of cult followers to whom Hubbard’s public image nevertheless remains unsullied if not equivalent to that of a seminal demigod.
It could be so argued that, in his time, motivated by nothing more than ego-driven desperation and with the stubborn, inflexible temperament of a jack-booted dictatorial tyrant, Hubbard managed to create a behemoth, immortal monument to himself in the form of Scientology. Like all successful con men, professional tricksters, Hubbard appeared to possess an uncanny grasp on the fundamentals of human nature – that insatiable need to transcend the mundane, the ordinary to become an integral part of something borne of vivid imagination, to be held captive to a fantastical idea much larger than oneself – the egregious exploitation of which became the foundational bricks upon which his Scientology empire was founded, built. But as shall be explained further, Hubbard was also a chameleon, a sinister changeling, a daring thespian cast in the starring role of dark burlesque theatrical productions.
In fact, it has been discovered that Scientology wasn’t the only large-scale con game “Hubbard” fronted for, and that his professional career began as a journeyman character actor, a product of American television’s golden age who was also a popular pop singer and television host, a culturally influential magazine mogul, and a 1960’s LSD guru posed as counter-culture hippy.
Continue reading “L. Ron Hubbard’s Mortifying Munster Mash”
