(This has been reposted from late yesterday and updated.)
Oh, please, Mommy, make Tom Cruise go away…:
Tom Cruise criticized NBC ”Today” show host Matt Lauer on Friday when Lauer mentioned Cruise’s earlier criticism of Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants. Cruise told Lauer he didn’t know what he was talking about. ”You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do,” Cruise said.
Mommy, I thought you told me Tom Cruise is an actor? I didn’t know he had a medical degree, too…
The interview became more heated when Lauer, who said he knew people who had been helped by the attention-deficit disorder drug Ritalin, asked Cruise about the effects of the drug.
”Matt, Matt, you don’t even — you’re glib,” Cruise responded. ”You don’t even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, OK. That’s what I’ve done.”
I thought he was an actor but he’s also an expert on medical research. Mommy, if I get sick can you call him to make me well, too? You only call that fat, smelly man who needs deodorant, Dr. Cohen:
When asked if he could be with someone at this stage in his life who doesn’t have an interest in the Church of Scientology — girlfriend Katie Holmes has said she’s embracing the religion — Cruise told Lauer: ”Scientology is something that you don’t understand. It’s like you could be a Christian and be a Scientologist.”
”It is a religion. Because it’s dealing with the spirit. You as a spiritual being. It gives you tools you can use to apply to your life.”
Cruise sounds like he was hypeactive (again) in this interview. We would suggest Ritalin, but…
Maybe Lauer should have squirted him in the face to calm him down but that has been tried…
Tom Cruise is more overexposed than a guy carrying a bag in each hand and a row of donuts below his waist in a nudist colony.
UPDATE: Watch Cruise and judge for yourself via this Crooks And Liars video. Don’t you feel overdosed on Cruise now (as in “I do NOT want to pay money to see him in a theater…).
UPDATE II: More Cruise-related links 4 U:
DC Media Girl
Ed Driscoll
Michele Catalano
TV Newser
Ann Althouse
Unfogged
UPDATE III: The best quote on this can be found at the end of a Washington Post piece:
Peg Nichols, a spokeswoman for the Landover-based Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, said her office was flooded with calls yesterday about Cruise’s statements. The group avoids comment on Scientology, but she advised people to be “smart consumers of medicine.” And she asked: “Since when would a celebrity have expertise in medicine? Would you go to your doctor and ask him about movie roles?”
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.