I'm sick of hearing about Tom Cruise. I'm sick of his overly exuberant declarations of love for Katie Holmes; his couch-jumping antics and self-conscious, self-deprecating mockery of said antics; his unnecessarily personal attacks on Brooke Shields; his scarily vehement diatribes against psychiatry; and his lackluster performance in War of the Worlds. I would be perfectly happy if Cruise just stepped off the pop-culture stage for the next year or 10.
At the same time, I really have to admire him.
Before you wonder if I've been taken in by Scientology and cut off from the Suppressive Persons in my life (as Holmes reportedly has), I'm not endorsing Cruise's views on psychiatry, his cultish religion, or even his acting. I am, however, willing to give Cruise credit for something other celebrities often receive praise for: standing up for something he strongly believes in, even in the face of extreme hostility.
It's easy for someone like Angelina Jolie, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, to stand up for starving children in Africa; that's a relatively uncontroversial issue. She may be intensely scrutinized for her mysterious relationship (or non-relationship) with Brad Pitt, but no one is asserting that Jolie is crazy because she wants to help malnourished kids in the Third World. Even people like Tim Robbins and Sean Penn, outspoken critics of President Bush and the Iraq war, are given more of a free pass to speak their minds in public. Plenty of people disagree with Robbins' and Penn's views, and some with especially strong convictions refuse to patronize their movies because of that, but for the most part they, and other politically outspoken celebrities, are allowed to freely speak their minds.
That's as it should be. Agree or disagree with Robbins and Penn (or celebrities like Ted Nugent and Toby Keith on the other end of the political spectrum), it's not hard to separate their work from their social and political views. While there is an online petition objecting to War of the Worlds because of Cruise's presence, there is no corresponding movement objecting to the movie because Robbins is in it, as well.
Analysis of Cruise's recent publicity meltdown almost always points to his firing longtime publicist Pat Kingsley, known for keeping a tight leash on her clients, and replacing her with his sister, Lee Anne Devette, a fellow Scientologist. The implication is that Kingsley kept Cruise's Scientological impulses in check, while Devette allows her brother to ramble on about whatever he feels like, consequences be damned. This analysis ignores one key factor: Tom Cruise is not stupid. It's not as if he doesn't have any control over what he says, and publicists are deciding if and when he can say what's on his mind.
There's no way Cruise wasn't aware of the consequences of engaging in a crusade against psychiatry, and even if he didn't anticipate such a virulent response, it's impossible he doesn't know what's going on. Yet, he hasn't backed down from his stance or toned down his rhetoric; he is really, truly, passionately invested in what he believes, and that's a trait we often hold up for admiration in people, even if we don't agree with them. Cruise believes (wrongly or not) that he is pointing out a great injustice in the world, and he is refusing to be pressured into keeping quiet about it. In some circles, that's known as courage.
If someday, years from now, it turns out that psychiatric drugs really were doing irreparable harm to millions of people, Tom Cruise will be known as a hero. Until that day, though, I'm content to admire him from afar (way, way afar).
Josh Bell denies having a crush on Katie Holmes. Read more of his takes on pop culture at
http://signalbleed.blogspot.com.