Tom Cruise is an actor. How do we know he’s not just acting all crazy and carrying the part with Academy Award caliber emotion and credibility? After all, he’s done the research. He understands the history of psychiatry. That man knows what ritalin is made of. Maybe he’s just been doing all this research to get in character. A character that knows so much about the drugs that he doesn’t believe in that he could probably produce them by hand, he just doesn’t because he disagrees with their uses and purpose in society. Am I being glib?
Tommy claims to be the sort of person who will research and learn about subjects in order to form an objective and educated opinion. I claim to be the same sort of person. My mom was the first person to mention his inflammatory and insolent remarks about Brooke Shields using anti-depressant drugs and therapy to treat post-partum depression, and she was pretty burned up about it, going so far as to declare a boycott against his new movie (nobody is hurting if she doesn’t go see it – I don’t think my mom has been inside a movie theater since Tom Cruise was married). Then, Brooke’s “War of Words” response came out in the NYT Op-Ed. Feeling like I needed more background information before I could make my judgment, I turned to my ever searching Google and was deluged with articles, blog responses, a boycotting petition and even a free verse frown from Rosie O’Donnell; critical analysis, fans turned away, and 176,000 raised eyebrows came up in the search results.
Tom Cruise accused Matt Lauer of being glib. The pronunciation of the word glib strikes me as a little bit glib. That’s pretty much how I’m going to remember Tom Cruise for the rest of my life. That crazed look in his eye every time he says “scientology” and the way he furrowed his once Sexiest Man Alive brow when he and the way he laughed gleefully maniacally after looking over at Katie Holmes and saying, “I can’t restrain myself.”
Please, Tom, do try.
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