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You may have heard that Tom Cruise was sponsoring a Scientology-flavored detox program for 9/11 first responders (the fund-raiser is tonight, in fact), and that the City Council was about to honor him for it. Yesterday, reports the Post, Mayor Bloomberg finally decided this wasn’t such a great idea. The initiative to give Cruise official kudos belongs to Councilman Hiram Monserrate, who claims that the program was secular in itself and the religion of its underwriter was thus irrelevant. Yet even the most casual fans of Xenu & Co. could spot that some features of the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project — specifically the sweat-and-vitamins regimen — were indistinguishable from the intro stage of Scientological indoctrination. Not to mention some of the families’ claims that the patients are being told to stop taking anti-depressants. Bloomberg didn’t provide any pithy sound bites on the matter, but he’d be hard-pressed to beat a remark by Councilman Peter Vallone; commending Cruise, Valone said, would cross the line between “cult and state.”
Mike Thumps Tom [NYP]
