Hey Tommy, about that tat
Lawrence Wright writes: “Davis became fiercely committed to the Sea Org. He got a tattoo on one arm of its logo—two palm fronds embracing a star, supposedly the emblem of the Galactic Confederacy seventy-five million years ago.”
As millions of people know, the Sea Org symbol is a laurel wreath and star.
I’m fairly certain that this item will feature in the Miscavige regime’s “Dead Agent Pack” or “False Report Correction Pack” in response to The New Yorker article.
Did you tell Wright that the Sea Org symbol is “palms fronds embracing a star?” Or is the tattoo on your arm actually palm fronds and a star? I do acknowledge, in a fair witness sort of way, that I don’t actually know if you have a tattoo, or even an arm, but I have to assume that during your many hours with Wright, the fact-checkers and David Remnick they checked these facts.
Or are the palm fronds just something Wright invented or imagined? It’s hard to imagine that this is a detail from his knowledge about Scientology? So maybe it’s sarcasm, like calling the Rod of Asclepius a snake embracing a dildo.
I mean, when you search Google Images for “Sea Org logo,” there it is, the laurel wreath and star. Search Images for “laurel wreath,” bingo. Don’t know what those branches around the star are? Search the web for “Sea Org logo.” Not many hits, in part because the term that Scientology and Scientologists use is “Sea Org symbol.” Despite that, using “logo,” the first result is a Wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_Org_logo.svg
That links, as you’d imagine, to the page for “Sea Org,” which displays the symbol or logo and captions it, “The Sea Org laurel wreath logo.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_Org_logo.svg
“Laurel wreath” is hot linked to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurel_wreath
And then, if you’re still not sure, search Google Images for “palm fronds.” http://preview.tinyurl.com/4jzoxov
Or was this a sort of friendly error, in the same way that the pan-determined can have friendly lawsuits.
I sure wish The New Yorker’s impressively lionized fact checkers had checked with me on that fact. They checked with me over and over about your BS that I’d forged Hubbard’s letter to Mary Sue where he wrote of drinking rum and doing pinks and greys, but the fact checkers never asked me about the SO symbol. Even if you have palm fronds tattooed on your arm, what Wright wrote is that the Sea Org logo is two palm fronds embracing a star.
I was in the SO for close to 11 years, and the cult clearly hasn’t changed the SO symbol, so it wasn’t as if I couldn’t have had this knowledge. I couldn’t say what your tattoos look like, and wouldn’t claim to, but I knew that the SO symbol is the laurel wreath and star and not palm fronds. Plus there are all these other ex-SOers, and you current SOers that The New Yorker talked to.
So to end up with palm fronds! It makes my Sea Org experience feel even gayer than it was. It’s like describing the US Logo as “Stars and Shafts” or “Asterisks and Stripes,” or the Apple logo as a persimmon. Not in that context, not in The New Yorker.
Yours accurately,
Gerry Armstrong