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Bigot by Trade: Tony Ortega
Imagine a man who’s never set foot in medical school, and yet here he is, dressed in scrubs, scalpel in hand, performing brain surgery on an unsuspecting patient. Or a woman who claims to know all there is to know about flying a jet plane as she goes about training future pilots, but who has never stepped into a cockpit in her life.
Such scenarios sound preposterous and would have their place only in a grotesque vaudevillian comedy or a horror movie script. But when it comes to Tony Ortega, such outrageously deceiving and dangerous behavior is his MO. In fact, it’s been his daily drug, ever since he began spewing hate, lies and bigotry against Scientologists, for this blogger has never so much as set foot inside a Church of Scientology, while claiming to know about the religion and its members.
Yes, it’s totally ludicrous. Yes, it’s pathetic. And yes, as in the case of our imaginary brain surgeon and flying instructor, it can be deadly.
The hate Ortega vomits has contributed to hundreds of threats and acts of violence against Scientologists. In his ongoing desperation to harm, Ortega has doggedly tried to wreck Scientologists’ lives by slandering them, attempting to shame grieving family members of deceased parishioners, and seeking to get Scientologists fired by their employers—simply because of their religion. I could go on, but you get the picture. Ortega’s daily anti-Scientology rantings are an obsession—an obsession that even cost him his job at the Voice.
Ortega’s daily anti-Scientology rantings are an obsession—an obsession that even cost him his job at the Voice.
One might wonder why a man would be so consumed by the urge to attack a religion and its members. Could it have something to do with his murky past, which includes supporting and defending a website named Backpage.com that facilitated child sex trafficking before it was shut down by the FBI in 2018? Could it have something to do with his fraudulent schemes as a “reporter” for New Times Los Angeles and Kansas City’s The Pitch?
In 2002, while working for the New Times LA, Ortega posed as journalist Antoine Oman to concoct a story about two girls who had been kidnapped and raped and who were planning to use this “opportunity” to appear in a Hollywood reality TV show, just to make a fast buck. The rapes were real. The rest was pure fabrication, oozing forth from what can only be described as a sick mind.
Arielle Silverstein, Ortega’s wife, is a United Nations employee. Besides feeding her jobless husband’s hate habit in the form of financial support, she also has her own documented history of religious intolerance and discrimination, under a pseudonym. Between them, they have spread hate and bigotry about Christians, Jews, Muslims and Scientologists.
It’s about time this child sex trafficking apologist and anti-Scientology extremist, along with his antireligious wife, were exposed for who they truly are: toxic inhibitors of well-meaning members of society. If this were a horror script, our fake brain surgeon and our charlatan flying instructor would be revealed and brought to justice in the end. For good people recognize villains and truth invariably prevails. And so it shall be with Ortega and Silverstein—of that I’m sure.
It’s just a matter of time.
