Dear Gossips,

As reported yesterday, on Monday’s episode of Dancing With The Stars, Leah Remini revealed that the Church Of Scientology was “looking for me to fail” on the show so that they could hahaha her in front of all their other members, like that would be the consequence of breaking up with Xenu. Click here for a refresher. Leah Remini has never been more famous. But, you know, I’m not sure those people understand logic.

They certainly don’t understand much about public relations. Because in response to Leah’s comments, the Church released this statement:

“We know this may come as a surprise to someone as self-absorbed as Ms. Remini but we could care less if she wins or loses on Dancing With The Stars.”

“Could care less” is such a stupid thing to say, on so many levels. First of all, the expression doesn’t make sense. Also, given the organisation’s reputation right now, why would you voluntarily word it like that and attack her character at the same time? These are the words that become representative of an entire community: ungracious and petty. Also impetuous. Which means that no one over there is thinking, actually thinking, before they press send.

It’s frightening, sure, because their behaviour keeps confirming all the speculation about how sinister it is inside their secret club. But it’s also maddening how incompetent they’ve shown themselves to be, over and over and over again. Basic Communications and PR 101 – craft your message carefully. Are you a proper business or are you running this sh-t out of your basement?

Alternative: “Ms Remini is mistaken. Our efforts are solely devoted to our membership, helping them levitate and purge aliens (or whatever it is, their mission statement). Our work is our only focus.” Done.

But now, because the way they’ve gone about it, imagine you’re, I don’t know, Giovanni Ribisi or Michael Pena, and your church is pissing around like it’s grade 10. Wouldn’t you start to have some doubts too? The argument against that, of course, is that since they’re Scientologists in the first place, maybe they wouldn’t have the sound judgment to be able to see it. But if Leah, a second generation Scientologist, managed to defect, defecting is not impossible. And there may be more of them pushing their way out of that door. Never mind fighting the rest of the world, Xenu’s biggest problem might be keeping the supporters that he still has.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey