• This is disturbing: When a TV reporter asked Mitch Winehouse how daughter Amy was doing, he replied "Fantastic, fantastic. Her boobs are great as well." Then he backtracked, "I shouldn't have said that should I?" And then he rambled on, "I didn't have to pay for the boobs" and went on to question how she got the cash for them. Apparently Amy is broke and begs him for money a lot. That is, unless she is still mega-rich and shelled out the reported $56K for that glorious rack by herself, which OK says is also a possibility. [OK]
• 
  
• Salman Rushdie rubbed salt in ex-girlfriend Pia Glenn's wound by showing up at a hoity-toity literary event with yet another raven-haired Amazonian goddess on his arm. This one is a Harvard grad who only dates models, which makes it oh-so-enigmatic why she'd date frumpy Rushdie. Hey, did I mention she's an aspiring writer? [Page 6]
• 
  
• When the deejay at 1Oak announced "23 bottles of Cristal for Lindsay Lohan's 23rd birthday," LiLo reportedly "look startled." Not because she is a recovering alcohol with a DUI under her belt, but because it totally wasn't her birthday, her birthday is on July 2nd! [Page 6]
• 
  
• Amber Lee Ettinger suffered "minor cuts" after a rogue lighting scaffold beamed her at that Thrillist-JetBlue junket that everyone went to but no one was supposed to talk about. Apparently the trip was "completely crazy," with freebie Trojan condoms flying everywhere, best all-inclusive junket spring break ever!! [Page 6]
• 
  
• The case against two men accused of extorting $25 million from John Travolta after son Jett's death has ended in a mistrial. The reason was as tabloid as the trial itself: the judge thought the jury pool was leaking information. The judge figured it out when a member of Bahamas' Parliament said he had inside knowledge that defendant Pleasant Bridgewater—a Bahamanian politician with a farcically adorable name—would be acquitted. [NYDN]
• 
  
• Jill Zarin & co. played on their cellphones and were generally bratty at the Memphis premiere. It would actually be pretty disappointing if she showed up somewhere and wasn't a nuisance. [Page 6]
• 
  
• There's a mistake on Jacko's will—or is the whole thing a forgery? Michael Jackson was in New York on July 7, 2002, the same day his will was signed in L.A. His lawyer says they simply wrote down the wrong date, which raises another troubling question: Why, when you are guiding the most famous man on the planet through the most important legal documents of his life, would you not bother to make sure you have the date right? [TMZ]
• 
  
• Trent Reznor, Roseanne Cash, Billy Bragg, and a bunch of other musicians are demanding federal documents explaining how their music was used during torture sessions at Gitmo. This is because they are dutifully liberal, highly enlightened, civic-minded folks who are only somewhat curious to know whether al-Qaeda operatives prefer Nine Inch Nails or country standards. [HuffPo]
• 
  
• Nicole Richie and Samantha Ronson are besties, and Lindsay Lohan is jealous. Nicole is taking the high road, though, and just "wants a better life" for LiLo, thereby employing the deepest and most cutting diss in the Mean Girl manual: Magnanimous pity. [Perez Hilton]

• Two shitheads allegedly tried exhort $25 million from John Travolta after his son Jett's death. If he didn't pay, they would release the 16-year's medical documents. Well, now they're on trial and poor Travolta had to testify about the 40 minutes he spent trying to save his son's life. He also admitted, finally, that his son was autistic, something he had never said before. [LA Times]
  
  
• Art imitated life for Jennifer Aniston during filming of The Bounty. A source claims that an assistant walked in on Aniston crying after filming a scene that reminded her of long-lost Brad Pitt. [Page Six]
  
  
• Conservative darling and failed beauty queen Carrie Prejean's really, really trying to hold onto those 15-minutes: she's modeling slutty Halloween costume. [TMZ]
  
  
• Ellen Pompeo had a baby. And it's a girl named Stella. [WaPo]
  
  
• Samantha Burke squeezed out Jude Law's baby a week early. We guess she wanted to get that sweet, sweet tabloid money sooner, rather than later. [Times Online]
  
  
• Lily Allen realized no one wants to buy her records anymore, so she's quit music forever. [Perez]
  
  
• Real Housewives of New York troublemaker Kelly Bensimon succeeded once again in grabbing some ink by posing in Playboy. But, like a wuss, she won't be showing her puss. [Page Six]
  
  
• Tinsley Mortimer makes her prince boyfriend carry her purse in silence. [Page Six]
  
  
• Not content to design just dresses, Zac Posen now wants to design an apartment building. [Page Six]
  
  
• Chynna Phillips says she fell into a 10-day depression after learning that her father John had been having a long-term affair with her half-sister, Mackenzie Phillips. She was not, however, surprised. [NYDN]

According to the Daily Mail - who rounded up some interesting quotes on the matter - it appears to be a very real possibility. To say Travolta's had a rough go of it recently would be putting it very, very lightly.

On the business side of things, Travolta's big role this year performed under studio expectations. A complete aside, when you consider his personal life:

His son Jett - reportedly autistic, a diagnosis the Church of Scientology refuses to dignify - passed away earlier this year. Travolta defied Scientology and acknowledged it. Some sleazy gossip website put together a theory that enlists the idea of Travolta not only having a gay lover, but the gay lover - his son's nanny - being a primary cause of his son's death. Which is besides the fact that someone tried to extort him over documents involved in his son's transportation, and his wife might've tried (successfully) to get Roger Friedman fired by going to the top brass at Fox over Friedman's comments on Scientology.

All of this gives the Daily Mail's report some ground to walk on, when they note:

His distress, say sources close to him, has been compounded by the first cracks in his 34-year relationship with the Church of Scientology, the cult-like religion of which Travolta is a prominent and generous benefactor. And there are dark mutterings that if he carries out private threats to leave, the organisation will go public with embarrassing details of his private life, including, it is claimed, allegations of past homosexual relationships. Sources in the U.S. disclosed to me this week that his son's sudden death has 'deeply shaken' Travolta's faith in the strange sect, which makes wild claims about its ability to cure a variety of physical and mental disorders.

There's more talk of Travolta taking late night drives by himself, and being in a "state of constant distress." There's the very evident weight Travolta's gained. There's the memory of Scientology's scary-ass leader David Miscavage slagging on Travolta's sexuality:

Earlier, the prestigious Time magazine also reported allegations made by Richard Aznaran, the former security head of Scientology, that the Church's leader, David Miscavige, had repeatedly joked about Travolta's 'promiscuous homosexual behaviour'.

And then there's the fact that Scientology has a well known history of intimidation of the physical and emotional stripe. This goes without saying, but: Travolta's donated millions of dollars, and what could only be thousands of hours to the church throughout his life. Shit, he made Battlefield Earth.

For a celebrity of Travolta's stature to renounce Scientology would be massive, for both parties. Even rumors of Travolta's potential departure from the religion are pretty damning. Granted, it'll be a difficult path if he chooses to take it - the resistance he'll encounter from the highest levels of the religion are potentially fiscally, emotionally, and physically dangerous to his livelihood - but one that could shake Scientology to its absolute core.

Is John Travolta cracking up? [Daily Mail]

The report was obtained by the National Enquirer. Travolta's use of the term "autistic" seems to be a break from church doctrine, which teaches that pyschiatric diagnoses are fake ailments invented by Nazi psychiatrists so they can give people drugs to keep them from realizing their true potential of controlling the physical world with their minds.

Prior to Jett's death, his mother Kelly Preston attributed his problems to a rare disorder called Kawasaki disease and to "environmental toxins" from carpet-cleaners. She claimed that a Scientological detoxification regime had helped to ease his symptoms.

After Jett's death, Scientology representatives denied that the church has taken a stance on autism, saying, "It's medicine. The church deals with the spirit. If people have a medical problem or a physical ailment, they go to a doctor. It's church policy that they do so and they get that addressed." But autism is a psychiatric disorder described in DSM-IV, psychiatry's diagnostic bible. While a case could be made that Travolta was only using the term generally, to describe a disorder with physical roots that he thought could be explained, Scientology-style, by toxins, it's certainly unusual for a high-profile representative of the church to use the word.

Previously, Bahamian officials had taken three people in for questioning about the case: Obie Wilchcombe, a former tourism minister who was close to the Travolta family; Tarino Lightbourne, an ambulance driver who was part of the crew who took the dying Jett to a hospital; and Pleasant Bridgewater, a local politician and lawyer who represents Lightbourne.

E! News reports that the FBI is supplying Bahamian police with voice-analysis experts to help analyze conversations between Bridgewater and Travoltas' lawyers.

Wilchcombe, meanwhile, says his only involvement was trying to warn the Travolta family of the extortion attempt, which seems to center around either a photo Lightbourne took in the ambulance or other information he gathered about Jett's appearance as he lay dying. The official cause of death was listed as a seizure, a condition to which Jett was prone. His parents attributed his seizures to exposure to cleaning chemicals. Many observers believe, however, that Jett suffered from autism, a disorder which often coincides with seizures. Travolta and his wife, actress, Kelly Preston, are devout Scientologists. Members of that cult believe conditions like autism are psychosomatic and can be cured through sometimes dangerous religious rituals.

The involvement of an American spy agency in a Bahamian police investigation only adds to the air of mystery around Jett Travolta's death. Lightbourne has entered a plea of not guilty. The question of what he claims to know, and why that claim so disturbed Travoltas' lawyers, lingers.

The three arrested are a Bahamian tourism minister who palled around with John Travolta, the ambulance driver who witnessed the star's last words to his dying son Jett, and a local politician, all charged with extortion.

Travolta's lawyers revealed that they were pursuing extortion charges against two suspects. But there are now three who are alleged to have been a part of the plot.

Obie Wilchcombe, a former minister of tourism for the island nation, was a "very close friend of the Travolta family," according to TMZ, and went on Larry King Live to describe Travolta's grief and details of funeral arrangements.

Tarino Lightbourne, part of the emergency crew summoned to the Travoltas' condo in an attempt to revive Jett after he was found unconscious the morning of January 2, told Inside Edition that Travolta's last words to his son were, "I'm sorry, Jett."

The third is Pleasant Bridgewater, a senator in the Bahamian parliament.

The lawyers said that the extortion was for making "false claims." But yesterday, WENN, an entertainment newswire, carried a report that the pair were trying to sell a photograph of the dying Jett taken in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

(Photo of Wilchcomb via TMZ, Lightbourn via Inside Edition)

Jett died in the Bahamas on January 2. The National Enquirer, citing a Bahamian newspaper, says police are investigating a local politician and a co-conspirator for the alleged extortion attempt. Mike Ossi and Howard Butler, Travolta's attorneys, released a statement:

Regrettably in a time of such terrible grief there are often a few individuals who attempt to make false claims in hopes of making millions of dollars. We will never let that happen.

Which makes no sense. If people are making false claims, why doesn't the Travolta camp just deny them? Wouldn't threatening to reveal something true be far more profitable?

It's a timely obsession. Just as polio captured the Cold War's feeling of paralysis, AIDS hysteria spoke to the sexual hangover from the '70s, and Prozac Nation answered the unease we felt about the '90s boom, autism is the disease of the moment for a time when computers are making us all feel less than human.

The death of Jett Travolta, whom some speculate had the brain-development disorder, has put autism in the headlines once more — though the papers hardly needed prompting. Michael Wolff, the shiny-pated media contrarian, identified the obsession with autism, but not its cause, in a recent blog post.

In its worst forms, autism is a horrible disease, incredibly painful for parents to deal with. It typically appears in a child by the age of three, interfering with the ability to communicate, blinding the victim to verbal and nonverbal conversational clues most of us take for granted.

Rain Man, the 1987 Dustin Hoffman movie, was for many the pop-culture introduction to autism, as well as the notion that it is often accompanied by unusual skills. But the mass-media fixation on it has grown as scientists have learned that autism exists on a spectrum. A milder form known as Asperger's syndrome — a combination of high intelligence and social ineptness — is thought to be practically epidemic in Silicon Valley; in 2001, Wired dubbed it the "geek syndrome." And since then, Time has put the disease on its cover twice.

The sliding scale of autism may be precisely what makes it so gripping now. The worry now: Are we all perhaps a bit autistic? Is the Internet turning us into robots, unable to express our emotions without mechanical help? Instant messaging famously suppresses social cues. Needing to type ":-)" to communicate our pleasure may give the tiniest hint of what the disease may be like.

There are a host of conspiracy theories about the rise in autism diagnoses, including the completely debunked notion it has something to do with vaccines. The consensus seems to be that we're seeing more autism cases because we're more primed to look for its symptoms. In other words, we see autism everywhere because we want to. And we look for it in our kids because we're obsessed with whether we have it ourselves.

Cognizant of the fact that they had landed a big fish, the ladies of The View were respectful to a fault today (even Barbara Walters!), though Elisabeth prefaced each and every question to Cruise with such slobbering, near-sexual praise you would have thought they'd dug up Ronald Reagan. Finally, forty minutes into the show, Walters brought her tear-inducing powers out of retirement and brought up the younger Travolta's death, quizzing Cruise on whether Scientologists actually eschew medicine. "It's actually the opposite," Cruise said, sketching out a scenario where church higher-ups tell Scientologists to go get their afflictions "handled." Consider that charge vaguely cleared up, then! Lisa Marie, your services are no longer necessary.

• The View [ABC]

Mainly because as an overcome, emotional Cruise fumbles for words while addressing the tragedy, Us Weekly prematurely ends their video clip with a sparkly ID bumper that is deeply inappropriate, given the circumstances. We'd encourage them to take a cue from 24, which ends its most tragic episodes with a respectfully silent clock, but we admire the sheer, campy chutzpah it took to watch this wrenching video and decide, "Needs more whimsy!"

• VIDEO: Tom Cruise: Jett Travolta's Death Is "Horrific" [Us]

The constantly changing versions of the events surrounding Jett's death have gripped the public's imagination because it is so congruent with the story of his father's life. John Travolta would have us believe that he is normal; that he is not a member of a crazy cult; and that he is straight. At least two of those things are false.

Let's count the inconsistencies, which extend back long before Jett's tragic passing:

• Jett's parents, John Travolta and Kelly Preston, adherents of Scientology, have long maintained that Jett suffered from Kawasaki disease, an immune disorder which causes inflammation of blood vessels. But Kawasaki disease is not linked to seizures, according to medical experts.
• When they weren't blaming Kawasaki disease, they publicly maintained Jett's health was fine, even though many in Hollywood believed Jett suffered from autism. And suddenly, after his death, we learn that Jett wasn't fine; rather, he was constantly supervised by two nannies and a baby monitor.
• Autism would explain Jett's disturbingly affectless appearance in public; about a third of people with autism also suffer seizures. Travolta and Preston are followers of Scientology, which believes conditions like autism are all in the victim's head — that they are "degraded beings" requiring "purification." Preston has said in the past that Jett underwent a Scientology purification, which reportedly involves high doses of niacin.
• Police in the Bahamas said Jett, who was found unconscious late on New Year's Day in his parents' condo and died at a hospital shortly afterward, had struck his head, and reported blood on the scene. The nanny who found him, Jeff Kathrein, a Scientologist wedding photographer hired by Jett's parents, John Travolta and Kelly Preston, was once spotted in an intimate kiss with Jett's father. Police said Jett was alone for hours, after last being seen the evening of January 1; a family lawyer maintained that Kathrein, who slept eight feet away from Jett, found him almost right away.
• A funeral director hired by the family said there was no sign of a bruise and that Jett's body "looked great." The cause of death on Jett's death certificate was listed simply as a seizure.
• Two chartered planes and a police hearse, ostensibly carrying Jett's remains, waited on the tarmac Monday, as Bahamian police blocked access. It was a ruse: Jett's body was being cremated at the time, and the family planned to fly his ashes back to Florida on Tuesday.

Jett, in reality, had a rounder face. But so what? The need to airbrush away Jett's chin is the perfect metaphor for the pathetic misdirections and deceptions the Travoltas have engaged in. What they're covering up is not worth covering up. This is not some grand crusade for the truth — which in the end is the simple and tragic tale of a teen boy dying too young. The lies, big and small, that Travolta tells aren't for Jett. They're for him to maintain his fake public image. He asks us, out of politeness or gullibility, to swallow it whole.

Yes, everyone wants to let the family grieve. Let them grieve — but Jett Travolta is the only one who should lie in peace.

Employing a creative, whimsical use of apostrophes and spaces, Presley asserts that uninformed observers (most likely psychiatrists or tax collectors) shouldn't use the younger Travolta's death as an opportunity to bash the church:

Folks, as popular as it has been to discriminate and ridicule Scientology and Scientologist's in the recent past , Now is NOT the time.

I realize that there is a lot of mis information out there about the subject which has caused a lot of stone throwing but we are not still in the dark ages and it is still an Unconstitutional Injustice to partake in and encourage such condemnation.

Among most of the crazy made up garbage that goes around about it , It is not true that Scientologist's "Don't believe in " medical care , medicine or medical Doctors and that may have something to do with this terrible tragedy.

Just like anyone else, If one is sick , they go to the doctor, If a medication will make it better then they take it.

If they don't then they are an idiot and you can't blame their religion.

Presley then added, "I was married to Michael Jackson, remember? You think I made it through that with just niacin and the support of Leah Remini? Let's just say I'm on a first-name basis with the pharmacist at Sav-On (Hi, Luisa!) and leave it at that."

• Now Is Not The Time. [Myspace]

Kawasaki or autism?

At a news conference late Monday, a Bahaman funeral home director and assistant director said they listed "seizure" as the cause of death on Jett Travolta's death certificate. Contrary to police reports that Jett hit his head, there was no sign of head trauma, and the body was in "great condition," the men said.

If Jett did, in fact, die from a seizure, it's worth noting that Kawasaki disease is "rarely fatal." Medical examiner Dr. Werner Spitz told E! "Death from Kawasaki is at best unusual." CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta on Larry King Live: "It's very rare in fact for someone to be in their teens and still have symptoms of Kawasaki."

All of which would suggest that Jett's seizures arose from another disorder. Like, say, his rumored autism. Which, per his Scientologist parents, was a mental disorder (possibly requiring a dreaded psychiatrist) he officially did not have.

Seizures or bleeding?

But what if Jett didn't die from a seizure at all? Doctors had expected a seizure diagnosis would take weeks, not hours or days.  

Dr. Cyril Wecht, whose claim to punditry is having autopsied Anna Nicole Smith's son in 2007, told Fox News weeks of tests would be needed to conclude a seizure killed someone:

If it’s a convulsive seizure disorder, they won’t find anything. There is nothing of significance to find, anatomically speaking. The only way you can make that diagnosis is if you rule out everything else, including drugs in a toxicology report. If that is the case, that could take a couple of weeks.

Spitz told E!: "When seizures are the cause... the absolute cause would take at least two weeks so everything can be tested."

If not by seizure, then how did Jett die?

Contrary to the funeral directors' statements, initial police reports suggested physical trauma. And early Tuesday, TMZ quoted anonymous "people in the bathroom" with Jett backing up that account and refuting the funeral directors' revised history:

Jett had suffered a seizure and struck either the toilet or the wall as he collapsed. He was "bleeding in several areas," including his mouth. He had no cuts but did have bruises on his body. Jett had also been bleeding internally.

If Jett had been bleeding for an extended period of time, that would sharpen the questions about whether Travolta's nannies, including his rumored gay lover, were qualified caregivers.

Despite what is written on the death certificate, the final word will come weeks from now, from the official autopsy report, inclusive of related tests. Barring objections by the police, only Travolta and his wife will have access to the report, leaving Jett's death as much of a mystery as they wish to keep it.

(Top pic from Getty; second pic from Entertainment Tonight.)

We're not sure if the candor of medics and funeral home staff in the Bahamas is just part of the regional flavor or what, but if it wasn't before, it definitely is after Restview Memorial Mortuary assistant director Glen Campbell disclosed that Jett's death certificate lists "seizure" as the 16-year-old's cause of death. He had no signs of head trauma, hematoma or other symptoms of a blow he was suspected to have suffered at the time of that seizure — and which were described by the EMT chief who administered to him the morning of Jan. 2.

"He tells The Associated Press that the body is in 'great condition,'" according to a report. "Campbell said the certificate was based on the autopsy findings, and gave no information on the cause of death beyond the word 'seizure.'" And ET sends late word over the transom that Jett will be cremated, with his ashes delivered to his parents tomorrow before their return to Florida. The end. We think. We hope.

• Death certificate: Travolta son killed by seizure [AP]

· Reports on Saturday revealed that Jett, 16, suffered a seizure at the Bahamian vacation home of his parents John Travolta and Kelly Preston. Travolta himself applied CPR until medics arrived; the EMT crew chief told Radar that Jett had a hematoma, suggesting a head blow, later confirmed by Travolta's lawyer and family friend Michael McDermott. There was "a minimum amount of blood," and Jett had no pulse. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. An autopsy is underway as of this writing.

· The day after it broke the story, TMZ followed up with word of a police investigation and pointing out conflicts between the Travoltas and investigators in the timeline preceding Jett's death. The Travoltas' nannies say Jett went to sleep at 6 p.m. on Jan. 1, and was discovered when one of the caretakers, Jeff Kathrein, awoke the next morning to find the teen unconscious on the bathroom floor. The police say Jett was last seen entering the bathroom at 11:30 p.m. — meaning he was undiscovered for up to 10 hours following his seizure. Naturally the Travolta camp went on the offensive, arguing that it was likely a second trip to the bathroom — after the caretakers were asleep — during which Jett collapsed.

· But who is Jeff Kathrein, anyway? Is he, as our East Coast cousin declaimed, "Travolta's rumored gay lover"? Or, as the LAT points out, an aspiring celebrity photographer who nannies to pay the bills? Shocker: The Travolta camp isn't commenting. But Kathrein will shoot your nuptials if you're in the market for a wedding photographer.

· Meanwhile, Scientology's enemies latched on to the opportunity to eviscerate its proponents, with Mark Ebner digging up a 2007 interview in which the father of an autistic girl alll but alleged child abuse in the Travoltas' treatment of Jett, whose own severe case of autism was long-suspected by outsiders but never acknowledged by the family. Instead, Jett's non-responsive condition was attributed to Kawasaki syndrome, a rare physical ailment that excused the Travoltas from treating Jett with CO$-condemned psychiatric drugs. (He did, according to McDermott, take anti-seizure medication for a while, which soon failed and whose regimen was ended.) With the exception of brother Joey, who studied autism for a documentary and believed Jett suffered from the condition, the family maintains its diagnosis.

· And a fascinating comments thread at Anonymous's Web site describes the "handlings" and $1,000-an-hour audits the Travoltas might have in front of them as part of Scientology's mourning rituals.

· Finally, it wouldn't be a celebrity death unless someone exploited it for their cause. Autism United sent an e-mail blast this morning asking Travolta and Preston to come clean for the sake of "15,000 parents of children with autism" — to be expected, we suppose, at least moreso than this pot-smelling press release from the publication Cannazine:

Research published in an issue of Science journal published in 2003, found that receptors in the brain, which respond to naturally-occurring cannabis-like chemicals (cannabinoids) made by the body, guarded neurons from being damaged by overstimulation.

Study co-author Beat Lutz, from Germany's Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, said the group's experiments on mice followed anecdotal and clinical tests of cannabis to treat seizures.

"In my opinion, there are certain forms of epilepsy where patients may feel relief from the use of cannabis," Dr Lutz said.

Maybe. Has anyone consulted Dr. Denis Leary on the matter?

Think about it: RadarOnline is run by the Enquirer staff. It is the Enquirer. That's how it got its scoops on the death of Travolta's son in the first place—the rescue worker's story, the friend's story, etc. This is their groove. Their stories are everywhere! But now, a news outlet can credit Radar rather than the National Enquirer, lending the reporting a somewhat more respectable air. RadarOnline's only real purpose now is to whitewash scoops for the Enquirer. This is what Alex Balk & co. were fired for. Psht.

For one thing, the underlying cause of the seizures was unclear.

John Travolta said his son had Kawasaki disease. But at least one doctor says the disease does not cause seizures.

One disease that is associated with elevated risk of seizures is autism. In 2006, celebrity writer Mark Ebner cited five anonymous sources who said Jett had that disease, not Kawasaki disease ("a media rep from the Autism Society of America (ASA), an executive from Cure Autism Now, a major Hollywood producer and parent of an autistic child, and a Hollywood actor-parent").

This weekend the Mirror cited an anonymous "close friend" of John Travolta's brother Joey. The source said Joey, who made a documentary about autism, strongly believed John's son Jett had the condition.

But movie star John, a high-ranking member of the Church of Scientology, would not likely have embraced an autism diagnosis; by all accounts, the church does not recognize the disorder as requiring medical treatment (as with any other illnesses the cult deems "psychosomatic").

Even if the diagnosis was sorted out, there's the issue of medication. We know Jett was on Depakote for several years, then removed. Travolta's lawyers said the decision was made by Travolta and Jett's Scientologist mother Kelly Preston "after consulting neurosurgeons."

But one most also consider than the "church" in which Travolta and Preston have reached the exalted rank of "Clear" made a practice of removing patients from anti-seizure medication specifically. In the clip up top (odd visuals are from the YouTube source), Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard discusses the process:

Sometimes they really seize and sometimes its just slight... the doctors keep them on something to prevent this. Its just a tranquilizer and they keep them on that one year, year in and year out. And then you come along as an auditor and you try to audit the pc and you tell the pc that hell have to go off that drug. And then all of a sudden... the doctor will call up plaintively asking you to please put her back on the drug because she needs this... Now I've been using a lot of medical words here or chemical words really. Just dont pay any attention to them because they're mostly gobbledygook.

It would be heartening to believe that Jett's parents listened to credible doctors rather than this sort of Scientology propaganda. One hopes so, if only to make their own grieving at least a bit less difficult. But persistent reports they dodged an accurate autism diagnosis for their own son raise, at the very least, some doubts.

Jett's parents, Travolta and Kelly Preston, are both "clear" — an exalted, expensively attained status in Scientology. Critics of Scientology have long known that the pseudo-religion, based on Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, discourages adherents from seeking medical help for problems they deem "psychosomatic." That old line about it being all in your head forms the basis of Scientology's weird belief system; most problems, even if they manifest themselves physically, are spiritual in nature, stemming from the patient's "reactive mind." Even aspirin is deemed a mood-altering drug to be avoided — too bad if you take it to prevent blood clots.

Hence the controversy over Jett Travolta's apparent death from a head injury, likely incurred after he suffered a seizure in the Bahamas condo where the Travolta family and their two nannies were staying. John Travolta and Kelly Preston have long claimed Jett developed Kawasaki disease after exposure at a young age to carpet-cleaning chemicals, which resulted in seizures, a claim medical experts find unlikely. At the time of his death, he was under the care of Jeff Kathrein, a wedding photographer whose main qualification for the nanny post seemed to be a course he completed in Scientology and a kiss he shared with Travolta.

Whatever the cause of his seizures, a Travolta family lawyer now says Jett had been taking Depakote, an anti-seizure medication, but had to stop it because of liver damage. Liver damage from Depakote is rare; more recently, the FDA has been concerned about its link to suicidal thoughts — exactly the kind of condition Scientologists they believe they can treat through the religious coursework they call "auditing."

Travolta's actor buddyTom Cruise has made the church's stance infamous through his wildly unpopular tour of the talk shows in which he tried to advance Scientology's anti-pyschiatry views. His badgering of NBC's Matt Lauer on the Today show pales in comparison to his crazy-laughing-guy turn in a private Scientology video. He's since declared that he's not going to share his Scientologist beliefs with the public, a decision which seems to have boosted box-office returns for Valkryie, his latest film.

Good for Cruise, bad for Scientology, which desperately needs Cruise's star power to spread the church's message. As well as his money, rumor has it — the church, once a financial powerhouse, is said to be strapped for cash.

Travolta and Preston surely loved Jett, and are as grieved by his death as any parent would be. But the accusation will linger that they privileged their adherence to Scientology over their devotion to their son. The death of Lisa McPherson, a 36-year-old Florida Scientologist who died after church members removed her from a hospital where she was due to receive psychological care, received little attention outside of local newspapers. Jett Travolta's death, on the other hand, is winning international attention, and raising the question of Scientology's anti-medicine stance. Could the quest of Hubbard's cult to spread the faith by courting Hollywood celebrities have backfired once and for all?

From a video celebrity photo agency X17 took of the family's trip to a Paris restaurant in November, it looks like Jeff's wife Ana Kathrein, his partner in a wedding-photography business, is the other nanny, since the help is said to travel constantly with the family and no other adults are visible with the Travoltas.

According to a record of Scientology courses taken, Ana Kathrein is a Grade III Scientologist, which puts her three grades away from being "clear," a vaunted status Travolta has apparently attained.

So why did Travolta and Preston pick these two — aside from their common religion, which teaches wacky beliefs about mental illness — to care for their children? Jett Travolta reportedly suffered from a host of medical problems, which his parents claim stem from exposure to carpet-cleaning chemicals, a claim medical experts find unlikely. Some speculate he had autism, a condition for which parents often hire expert caregivers. Instead, Jett got two Scientologist wedding photographers.