High-Ranking Scientologist Reveals the Memo the Church Sent Out After ‘South Park’ Poked Fun at Tom Cruise

Scientologists have a series of acronyms and codes to refer to the various threats to their plans for world domination, with the kind of “joking & degrading” featured on shows like South Park shortened to “J&D.” Gotta protect the head FP somehow.

When Trey Parker and Matt Stone first started taking shots at the aggressively litigious and rapidly growing religious and political organization the Church of Scientology in the classic South Park Season 12 episode “Trapped in the Closet,” they unintentionally sparked one of the show’s most disappointing controversies that led to beloved series regular Isaac Hayes leaving the show for good, shortly before his death. As one of the many celebrities whom Scientologists successfully recruited into their ranks, Hayes supposedly took issue with South Park repeating the official Scientology creation myth verbatim and educating the world on what Scientologists actually believe.

Hayes’ son Isaac Hayes III has long argued that, due to his father’s declining health at the time when he supposedly stepped away from the role of Chef on South Park, his father couldn’t have penned the public and infamous 2006 resignation letter, and that Scientology officials must have ghost-written the condemnation of “Trapped in the Closet” without Hayes’ knowledge. However, a former high-ranking Scientologist who claims to have penned the internal memo addressing the Church’s plan of response to “Trapped in the Closet” says that the truth is much more complicated.

I didn’t know “make love to children” needed an entire dispatch.

Mike Rinder is a former Scientology executive and current critic of the church who spoke to The Daily Beast about the aftermath of “Trapped in the Closet,” including Hayes’ “official” feelings on the matter. Rinder claims to have written the leaked memo from the day after “Trapped in the Closet” aired, which begins, “This program aired last night on Comedy Central. They did not contact the Church or give any forewarning on the show, not even to Isaac. The program is a total J&D of Scientology, Tom Cruise and John Travolta and contains upper level data.” 

Much of Rinder’s report on the internal outrage that South Park sparked within Scientology centers around journalist Mark Ebner, with whom Parker and Stone consulted when writing “Trapped in the Closet” and who wrote a 1996 exposé for Spy magazine on the initiation process after “joining” the church and learning their secrets. The article, titled “Do You Want to Buy a Bridge?” was infamous among the upper tier of Scientologists, and their plan to squash South Park and “Trapped in the Closet” started with discrediting Ebner.

“We learned that Mark Ebner consulted on the program. (He also is listed as a contributing writer at Radar, and earlier picketed the church and did entheta ((church speak for anti-Scientology)) postings about Isaac Hayes calling Isaac a ‘house (N-word)’ and an ‘Uncle Tom’ for selling out to Scientology,)” Rinder’s memo alleged. 

For Hayes’ part in the response, Rinder confirmed Parker and Stone’s claims that they deliberately kept Chef in the dark about the Scientology episode to avoid any extra controversy. “Isaac was briefed on the show when he arrived in LA at lunch time,” the memo states. “He was very pissed and said it explained why he hadn’t been able to reach the creators of the show, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, over the last few days.” Then, the bombshell: “He said he had had it with the show and is going to quit. This is not being done today so as not to create a media incident.”

“Isaac placed a call to Doug Herzog, the President of Comedy Central, to get them not to re-air the program. He left a message for Herzog who is on a plane en route back to L.A. He is going to tell him how pissed he is that they consulted with a racist, bigot Ebner, but not with him, and if they had, he would have told them who Ebner is and what they were going to get into,” Rinder further wrote in the memo. “He then spoke to Matt Stone and Trey Parker. He briefed them on Ebner, and both claimed that they did not like Ebner either and that he was working with one of their producers, trying to distance themselves from the show.” 

Ebner, who spoke to The Daily Beast about the memo and the Church of Scientology’s response to “Trapped in the Closet,” denied ever using a racial slur to describe Hayes and laughed at the Church’s official account of the behind-the-scenes politics of South Park. “If (Parker and Stone) didn’t like me, then I’d ask anyone to explain why I was continually invited to all of their holiday parties for years afterwards,” Ebner posited.

The plan, as Rinder wrote, was three parts: Hayes would run interference with Comedy Central, Parker and Stone, eventually quitting the show after some time had past while “third-partying” Ebner, a Scientologist term for pinning any conflict between two entities on a third party. The Church itself would also blame Ebner, both to Viacom executives within their influence and to the public, painting him as a racist rabble-rouser with an ax to grind. Then, the Church would investigate Ebner and seek to expose his “crimes.” 

Speaking to The Daily Beast, Rinder doesn’t recall Scientology ever investigating Ebner or his “crimes,” but he’s sure that someone must have dug into Ebner’s actions even further. “Given the magnitude of this flap, I would be pretty certain it did. Whether it uncovered anything or not, I have no recollection.” 

While Rinder’s official, internal account of the saga claims that Hayes was not only willing to quit South Park over “Trapped in the Closet” but an active agent in the Church’s response, Rinder admits that the version of events reported by Hayes’ son could be closer to the truth than what he claimed in the memo. Rinder called Isaac Hayes III’s assertion that his father was forced to quit South Park a “fair take,” though he suggested that Hayes having more deeply-held attachment to the Church than outsiders claim is “also a fair take.”

Whatever role Hayes played in Scientology’s response to “Trapped in the Closet” seems to be more complicated than either side of the controversy will admit, but the result is the same: Hayes left South Park, “Trapped in the Closet” has been watched millions of times thanks to the controversy, and the Church of Scientology failed to destroy Ebner’s entire life and career. As Ebner noted to The Daily Beast, his contribution to the South Park canon is still one of the highest-rated episodes in the show’s history.

Tom Cruise could not be reached for comment – though we haven’t checked the fudge-packing factory to see if he’s on his shift.