The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power - Analysis

Analysis

Several authors have commented on the article and used it as a reference for background on Scientology. Not all analysis of the article has been positive. David Healy's book criticizing the pharmaceutical industry, Let Them Eat Prozac, was critical: "The Time article was way over the top. Even Saddam Hussein was portrayed less badly." Healy addressed the article's claim that lawsuits were one of the Church's key tactics against enemies. He noted that the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a Church of Scientology affiliated group discussed in the article, had filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration inquiring what it was going to do about Prozac. Healy dismissed the notion that CCHR engaged in "orchestrated campaigns", writing that very few of the fifty lawsuits filed against Prozac were related to the Church of Scientology. Mark Silk criticized Behar's article in his book Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. Silk classified the work among what he referred to as the "false-prophecy topos", and characterized Behar's account of Noah Lottick's suicide as an "atrocity tale".

Insane Therapy noted that Scientology "achieved more notoriety ... with the publication of the journalist Richard Behar's highly critical article". Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality described the cover design of the article as it appeared in Time, writing that it "shouted" the headline from the magazine cover. In a 2005 piece, Salon.com magazine noted that for those interested in the Church of Scientology, the Time article still remains a "milestone in news coverage", and that those who back the Church believe it was "an outrageously biased account".

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