Poll Shows That Nobody Thinks Scientology Is a Real Thing and Celebrity Endorsements Are Pointless

By Doug Barry | October 2, 2012 | 6:10pm

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A new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll has revealed some interesting truths about Americans and either/or question-posing. An overwhelming majority of respondents haughtily said that Scientology (which, despite its high-profile celebrity devotees, has resonated with less than 100,000 Americans and has been likened to a cult) is so not a religion, with only 13 percent of people shrugging and saying that the tenets of Scientology are no more or less ridiculous, when you really consider it, than the tenets of any other religion.

The lonely Americans who didn’t immediately hang up the phone when they realized that whoever they were speaking to wasn’t going to tell them that they, as a long-lost relative of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, were entitled to a fortune secreted out of Russia in the chaos of the October Revolution, also said they’d prefer to win an Olympic gold medal rather than a Pulitzer Prize by a slim margin of 40 to 36 percent. Chalk that up either to the sorts of leading questions pollsters ask or the fact that Pulitzer Prizes have become Cracker Jack engagement rings in the world of arts and letters. Also, pretty much nobody thinks celebrity endorsements are effective, meaning that every former American Idol runner-up hawking Proactiv on epic late-night infomercials can go ahead and just stop.