Can we ask the question millions of Americans are now asking: please, Mommy, can you make these people go away?
You’ll suffer a bout of celebrity/hype/ego/movie promotion diabetes as you read this (please, Mommy, don’t make me read it!)from Reuters:
Film star Tom Cruise has asked girlfriend Katie Holmes to marry him, he announced on Friday, ending weeks of speculation over whether Hollywood’s hottest couple would wed.
Appearing with Holmes at a Paris news conference, the 42-year-old explained how he had chosen the Eiffel Tower in the city of romance to make his move.
“Yes I proposed to Kate last night … because it is very beautiful and romantic here,” Cruise said, clarifying later that the engagement had actually begun in the early hours of Friday.
Smiling and exchanging glances with Holmes, who was sitting in the audience, he added: “I haven’t slept all night. It’s very exciting and very beautiful.”
Cruise, one of Hollywood’s most powerful personalities, was in Paris to promote his latest blockbuster, Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds”.
Holmes, 26, has also been trotting the globe in recent days for her film “Batman Begins”.
“So happy,” Holmes told Reuters after the conference, when asked how she was feeling. She was sporting a large engagement ring.
Awww.
Tom Cruise has not just jumped the shark in recent months, he seems to have jumped the whale. Even though he is one of Hollywood’s most powerful personalities, it has gotten to the point where seeing him hyper on Oprah, grinning on an awards show, lecturing to a fellow performer on taking meds, or seeing a report about how his bride to be is going to convert to his religion has lessened the desire to pay money to see see him in anything again.
All that remains is a 24 Hour Tom Cruise cable channel.
This is a classic case of publicity and pop culture overkill. How can we now suspend belief when we see Cruise in a role when we think of him jumping around on Oprah?
We wish them the best of luck on their upcoming marriage — and wish them the best of luck on their future marriages, too.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.