Will Tom Cruise Hire Fox News’ Tony Snow?

Which Fox News anchor will Tom Cruise hire to help him create a new image? I mean, we’ve seen this reaction somewhere, haven’t we?

Powerful Hollywood friends of Tom Cruise rallied to his defense on Wednesday as a new poll suggested the actor’s odd behavior in recent months may have cost him millions of dollars at the box office.

Days after his latest movie, “Mission: Impossible III,” opened to lower-than-expected domestic ticket sales, a USA Today/Gallup poll showed Cruise’s star power has dimmed considerably during the past year in the eyes of the public.

Pshaw. How can that be? How can jumping on a couch on Oprah, lecturing a female star about giving birth and psychiatry and (jokingly he later said) saying he’d love to eat his wife’s afterbirth cause image problems?

How can people with computers seeing the front page of Google contain stories about Tom Cruise that seemingly belong in the ODD NEWS department harm an image? How could anyone hear Cruise lecture Matt Lauer on psychiatry not adore him? How can turning on the TV Hollywood news shows, seeing his grinning face constantly in tabloids (unless it’s blocked with his lips locked on his fiance’s), and hearing co-workers over the water cooler talk about how batty he seemed to be acting hurt his image? How can people get sick of hearing about Scientology (in fact, why doesn’t Streisand talk just as much about Judaism and follow his example)?

Here’s how:

In the poll of 1,013 adults conducted over the weekend the film opened in theaters, 35 percent had a favorable opinion of Cruise, while 51 percent had an unfavorable opinion.

That’s a major turnaround from last year when Cruise’s previous film, “War of the Worlds,” opened and his poll ratings were 58 percent favorable and 31 percent unfavorable.

USA Today reported that Cruise’s popularity decline with women was especially sharp, slipping from a 56 percent favorable rating in 2005 to 35 percent now.

Who does he think he is? George Bush? The Reuters piece goes on to quote powerful Hollywood friends who seem to be doing more spinning than a row of Maytags at Walmart’s:

“Tom Cruise is one of the most important stars ever in the motion picture business,” Universal Studios President Ron Meyer, a close friend and former agent, told Reuters. “I don’t know anybody who has had the consistent success rate that Tom has. And nobody should be counting him out.”

Oh.

“It’s the biggest non-holiday opening for a Tom Cruise movie ever, and the third-biggest in the history of his movies,” said longtime producing partner, Paula Wagner. “His career has spanned over 20 years of powerful, culture-reflecting and culture-changing films.”

Yep.

“The media overexposes him, and then turns around and asks the question: ‘Is he overexposed?’, which is kind of ironic,” Cruise spokesman Arnold Robinson told Reuters.

And — this is important to note — the media edited out the gun being held to Cruise’s head that made him jump on Oprah’s couch (even your dog would get smacked on the nose for that), make the comments about Brooke Shields, and raise the idea of a cheap, natural form of husband snack food.

Attention Tom: Tony Snow just took a new job.

But Chris Wallace might be available.