Last night a fair-sized portion of the HE community saw Alex Gibney‘s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief on HBO, and now it’s commonly understood that this is a seriously brutal, all-but-impossible-to-refute takedown documentary, and that the image of Tom Cruise as a coddled loon and an enabler of a decidedly venal organization is not going to dissipate. How can his brand not be in serious jeopardy from this? How can a person who’s seen Going Clear pay to see Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation and not think “the Scientology stigma is stronger than the illusion of cool, super-brave Ethan Hunt”? Last night I tweeted that Cruise “has no honor if he stays with these maniacs…he has to stand up, man up, clear his head.” Who’s seen the Gibney doc, what’s the verdict and what would you do if you were Cruise? Would you just pretend it hasn’t been seen and that nobody cares? If he could just find a backbone and leave the Church of Scientology, he’d the coolest guy in town. As Going Clear author Lawrence Wright said in an interview last year, Cruise is “the pivotal figure who bears the greatest moral burden” within the whole ghastly Scientology scenario.