Celebutards Page 8

  David, according to this account, told Rove he needed to bring in new people to tell him the “truth” about global warming. When Rove mentioned White House science adviser John Marburger “Crow began poking Rove’s chest with her finger, demanding to know what corporations were underwriting Marburger’s work.” With Crow still jabbing Rove in the chest, he finally started back to his seat. That’s when Crow grabbed his arm. She’s lucky she didn’t get tossed in the street like some crazy stalker.

  Rove had little to add about the insane confrontation of which Crow and David are so proud. “She came over to insult me, and she succeeded,” was all he would say.

  White House spokesman Tony Fratto zinged, “We have respect for the opinions and passion that many people have for climate change. I wish the same respect was afforded to the president.”

  The next month, Crow announced on her website that she had officially joined the upper strata of the celebustocracy. She’d adopted a two-week-old boy. But how?

  Normally, agencies will not adopt out an infant to a woman, particularly a single mother, following such a recent cancer diagnosis. But Sheryl Crow is no ordinary woman. She is a wealthy, internationally famous individual, not to mention a self-appointed planetary savior. The rules appear to be different for her.

  For the sake of the child, I pray Sheryl Crow remains well.

  9

  All the Wrong Moves

  TOM CRUISE

  Here’s the problem. You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.

  —Tom Cruise to Today show host Matt Lauer, June 28, 2005

  HE SHOT TO FAME dancing in his underwear in 1983’s Risky Business, and came into his own as an action star in Mission Impossible. But then, folks coast-to-coast started questioning his sanity after he jumped on Oprah Winfrey’s couch while declaring love for vacant-eyed Katie Holmes. He finally fell to a level of disrepute normally reserved for schoolyard flashers when he slammed Brooke Shields for using prescription medication to quell post-partum depression.

  He is Tom Cruise: Scientologist and all-around loon. He’s included here not for any earthly political penchant, but for a stunning and complete lack of judgment and disconnection with reality that very nearly rivals a sober Mel Gibson’s.

  Thomas Cruise Mapother IV was born in Syracuse, New York, on July 3, 1962, to Mary Lee, a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer and, Cruise has said, a bully whose last name he dropped at age twelve. Cruise found acting success early and did not attend college. He claims to have suffered as a child from learning disabilities. But like much else in life, he overcame this hardship not with conventional therapy, but with the religion made popular by the Hollywood crowd, Scientology.

  At twenty-three he married Mimi Rogers, six years his senior, who introduced him to the faith. The couple split three years later after Cruise refused to perform his husbandly duties. “He was seriously thinking of becoming a monk,” Rogers told Playboy. “He thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument, but my instrument needed tuning, and we had to split.”

  His second marriage, to actress Nicole Kidman, started in 1990, the same year he was declared People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” It lasted ten years and they adopted two children. According to Andrew Morton’s book, Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography, Kidman, who became a Scientologist, was on the outs after conceding in a 1999 interview: “I was raised Catholic, and a big part of me is still a Catholic girl.” She was three months pregnant when she learned about the impending divorce from Cruise’s lawyer. She then lost the baby. Tom sent flowers, but did not visit. Only later, Kidman, who stands five feet, ten and a-half inches, was able to joke about her five-foot-seven ex-mate: “At least now I can wear heels.”

  Over the years, Cruise has sued or threatened to sue at least four individuals and publications for advancing persistent rumors that he is gay, which he vigorously denies. Gay porn actor Chad Slater was ordered to pay Cruise $10 million in damages for telling a celebrity magazine about a purported love affair.

  Cruise was foolish to concentrate on rumors that no one really cared about. He should have paid more notice to the day the public turned against him en masse. That happened the moment Cruise fired his long-time publicist, Pat Kingsley, who forbid journalists, at the peril of losing access, to talk about Scientology. Cruise replaced her for a time with his sister, Lee Ann Devette, who had no such qualms. And thus, we met the real Tom Cruise—abrasive, wild-eyed. And mean.

  Disaster followed. Cruise was freakishly testy during his interview with Matt Lauer, denying the existence of chemical imbalances, declaring that he alone knew the history of psychiatry. And he slammed Lauer as “glib” for defending Brooke Shields’ decision to take medication to conquer the baby blues. Shields called Cruise’s words “irresponsible and dangerous.” But Tom apologized to Brooke, and the stars made up.

  On April 18, 2006, Katie Holmes, sixteen years Tom’s junior, gave birth to daughter Suri. During Katie’s pregnancy, Cruise raised the collective blood pressure by telling GQ magazine he thought the placenta and umbilical cord would be “very nutritious.” He said, “I’m gonna eat the placenta.” He later cracked to Diane Sawyer, “Yeah, we’re going to do that—a whole family thing. Isn’t that normal and natural?” Then he added, “No, we’re not eating it.”

  Message to Tom: it’s not funny if what you say is believable.

  * * *

  During Katie’s pregnancy, Cruise raised the collective blood pressure by telling GQ magazine he thought the placenta and umbilical cord would be “very nutritious.”

  * * *

  Stories were rampant that the birth would be “silent,” in keeping with Scientology dictates. Cruise did not deny this entirely. “It’s really about respecting the woman,” he told GQ. “It’s not about her not screaming.” He told Sawyer, “The mother makes as much noise…you know, she’s going through it. But why have other people make noise? You know, you want that area very calm and to make it very special.”

  As a present for Katie, Cruise didn’t buy diamonds (or a muzzle). He bought a home ultrasound machine. Very creepy. Doctors complained that sonograms, which check babies’ development, should be performed only by trained technicians. But if Katie had a problem with that or with anything else, absolutely no light was shed on the matter by Diane Sawyer, who had the blank-faced starlet alone in a rare interview for eight-plus minutes in January 2008 on Good Morning America. The diva broadcaster talked for five minutes about the Scientology convert’s shoes. But not one substantive question crossed her lips about the state of Katie and Tom’s weird union.

  She also didn’t ask about suggestions in Morton’s biography that Tom was No. 2 man in his church, or even that Suri was not Cruise’s child at all, but was conceived, Rosemary’s Baby–style, from the frozen sperm of late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise’s lawyer, Bertram Fields, called that and everything else in the book “a pack of lies.”

  I got an up-close peek at the “hyperactive midlife crisis and sometime actor,” as I referred to Cruise, as he took New York—by helicopter, motorcycle, fire truck and rented subway car—in May 2006 to promote Mission Impossible 3. What a shock. Cruise over the years had morphed from teen looker, to Arnold Scwarzenegger-wannabe, to attention-starved “Norma Desmond, croaking for his close-up,” as I duly noted. He would try to make me pay for that.

  From the cheap seats in the press, you see how much control a single, little man can exert on an entire city in the middle of a busy work day in the interest of self-promotion. Arriving on the back of a fire truck, Tom brought traffic to a halt in bustling Times Square. He demanded that I, a lowly columnist, sit through his new movie before being allowed to approach. A publicist told me this rule came down “from the top.” The top?

  A screening was arranged on that very day. Though the theater was designed to seat 1,000, only one journalist and I attended. Fortunately for Cruise, the movie was pretty goo
d. But then, I’m a sucker for action flicks.

  Not so good was the reception we got later, as Tom, looking like a toddler taken off his Ritalin by drug-hating Scientologists, ridiculously played New York City action hero. I was shoved in the chest by a cop and threatened with arrest by a press bunny when I innocently bisected his air space on a public street. Under peril of bodily harm, I did manage to retrieve an autograph for my then-seven-year-old daughter, who remains strangely loyal to Cruise. Well, they were the same size. But the actor no doubt regretted signing after he read my column on his wild and wooly day. It led him to personally ban a photographer from the New York Post from the Los Angeles premiere of Mission Impossible 3. The news was actually encouraging. Tom reads!

  * * *

  I did manage to retrieve an autograph for my then-seven-year-old daughter, who remains strangely loyal to Cruise. Well, they were the same size.

  * * *

  So is Tom Cruise whacked? You decide. I now present Tom—in his own words. Here is a partial transcript of a 2004 videotape produced by the Church of Scientology as a recruitment tool. It’s Tom at his most maniacal.

  (Not surprisingly, the church succeeded in getting countless copies pulled off the Internet by threatening to take legal action for “copyright infringement.” But after Morton’s book came out, the folks at gawker.com refused to remove it. They did the sane, movie-going public a tremendous service.)

  It starts with an announcer:

  “But if that’s what Mr. Cruise has brought to this world, there still remains one more word on the man. Call it: Tom Cruise on Tom Cruise, Scientologist.

  Music that sounds like the distorted theme music from Mission: Impossible plays in the background. Tom punctuates his words with karate chops and “whoops.”

  Here he is:

  “I think it’s a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist and it’s something you have to earn. And because a Scientologist does, he or she has the ability to create new and better realities, and improve conditions. Uh, being a Scientologist, you look at someone and you know absolutely that you can help them.

  “There’s a time I went through this and I said, ‘You know what?’ When I read it ah, you know, I just went phooo. This is it; is exactly it.

  “Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it’s not like anyone else, it’s, you drive past, you know you have to do something about it. You know you are the only one who can really help.

  “But that’s…that’s what drives me is that I know that we have an opportunity and, uh, to really help for the first time and effectively change people’s lives, and ah I’m dedicated to that. I’m gonna, I’m absolutely, uncompromisingly dedicated to that.

  “Orgs [Scientology organizations] are there to help, OK. But we, also as the public, we have a responsibility. It’s not just the orgs. It’s not just [church leader] Dave Miscavige. You know, it’s not just not just me. It’s you. It’s everyone out there kinda rereading KSW [“Keep Scientology working”] and looking what needs to be done and saying, okay, am I gonna do it or am I not gonna do it? Period. And am I gonna look at that guy or am I too afraid because I have my own out-ethics [ethics are tools needed to apply the principles of Scientology; out-ethics go against Scientology] to put in someone else’s ethics? And that’s all it comes down to…

  “We are the authorities on getting people off drugs. We are the authorities on the mind. We are the authorities on improving conditions. Crimanon [a program that treats criminals]. We can rehabilitate criminals. We can bring peace and unite cultures. That once you know these tools and you know that they work, it’s not good enough that I’m just doing okay.

  “Traveling the world and meeting the people that I’ve met, you know, talking with these leaders in various fields, [pause] they want help, and they are depending on people who know and who can be effective, and do it, and that’s us. That is our responsibility to do that. It is the time now. Now is the time. It is being a Scientologist, people are turning to you, and you better know it, and if you don’t, you know, go and learn it. [Laughs] but don’t pretend you know it, or whatever.

  “It’s like, we’re here to help. If you’re a Scientologist, you see life, things, the way they are, in all it’s glory, in all of its complexity, and the more you know as a Scientologist, the more you become overwhelmed by it. [Laughs again, clapping hands]

  “I wish the world was a different place, I’d like to go on vacation, play, and just do that. Know what I mean? I mean that’s how I want it to be. There’s times I’d like to do that, but I can’t because I know, I know, so, you know, I have to do something about it…It’s not…

  “You can just see the look in their eyes. You know the ones who are doing it, and you know the spectators [dabblers in Scientology, the worst], the ones who are going, ‘Well, it’s easy for you. That thing, I’ve canceled that in my area.

  “[Laughs] It’s like, man, you’re either in or you’re out. That spectatorism, I’ve no time for it. That is something we have no time for now.

  “So it’s our responsibility to educate, create the new reality. We have that responsibility to say, hey, this is the way it should be done. We do it this way and people are actually getting better. Let’s get it done. Let’s get it really done.

  “Have enough love, compassion and toughness, that you’re going to do it, and do it right.”

  Announcer: “A Scientologist can be defined by a single question: ‘Would you want others to achieve the knowledge you now have?’ In answering that question, Tom Cruise has introduced LRH[L. Ron Hubbard] technology to over one billion people of Earth, and that’s only the first wave he’s unleashed, which is why the story of Tom Cruise, Scientologist, has only just begun.”

  In another video to emerge, Tom Cruise takes credit for saving the lives of hundreds of poisoned workers at the World Trade Center site, and calls federal officials “liars.”

  He saves workers. Unites world cultures. Rehabilitates criminals, performs sonograms. And the one billion people on Earth he’s reached are just the start.

  Next: Tom walks on water. Or is there water in outer space?

  10

  Crapping Out, One Baby at a Time

  BRANGELINA

  It’s his blood. It’s in a…I think it’s supposed to be for pressed flowers.

  —Angelina Jolie displays a charm containing Billy Bob Thornton’s blood to Larry King, August 4, 2001

  I think we’ll crap out somewhere between seven and nine.

  —Brad Pitt tells Charlie Rose the number of children he wants to produce with Angelina, December 17, 2007

  THEY GO TOGETHER, like Hollywood and glamour. Like tattoos and body piercings. Like celebutards and their self-appointed mission to save the planet. They are Angelina Jolie, the bisexual, blood-obsessed, brother-kissing, Illustrated Woman who could badly use a sandwich, and Brad Pitt, the somewhat dim, Angelina-obsessed hunk who could badly use a shave.

  Without the benefit of marriage, they have adopted children from around the world, and birthed one of their own in a Namibian clinic and two more in France. Despite demanding film careers and a globe-trotting life-style—their kids have attended more schools in a single year than some of us have seen in a lifetime—this strange and golden couple, collectively known in the press as “Brangelina,” has found time to do high-profile humanitarian work, Brad for victims of Hurricane Katrina and Angie for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. However well-meaning her volunteerism, Angelina Jolie has failed to address the extreme controversies that have shamed other UN efforts, specifically the Oil for Food scandal and allegations that women were raped by UN peacekeeping troops in Congo. And no interviewer, not even Anderson Cooper, who had Angelina all to himself for a couple of hours, has pressed her to speak out about such unpleasant things.

  William Bradley Pitt was born December 18, 1963, in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and raised in Springfield, Missouri, the son of Jane Etta, a high school counselor, and William Alvin Pitt,
a truck company owner. Angelina Jolie Voight, as she was known at birth, followed Brad into the world nearly a dozen years later, on June 4, 1975, in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of actors Jon Voight and Marcheline Bertrand. Bertrand, who died from ovarian cancer in 2007, was French Canadian, Voight German and Slovak. Her parents split up a year after her birth, and Marcheline gave up acting to raise Angelina and her older brother. Angelina’s relationship with Dad has always been fraught. Now she won’t speak to him.

  Brad’s background was the more conventional. He attended the University of Missouri, majoring in journalism, but left two credits short of graduating to move to California, initially supporting himself by driving strippers in limousines, moving refrigerators, and dressing up as a giant chicken for the restaurant chain el Pollo Loco. He got noticed, big-time, in a supporting role as a hustler in 1991’s Thelma and Louise in which he took off his shirt, donned a cowboy hat, and worked his way into the fantasies of millions of women and more than a few men. Like his buddy and Oceans Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen co-star George Clooney, he’s twice been named People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. In 2000, he married Friends TV star Jennifer Aniston, a marriage that, for years, seemed like the rare Hollywood keeper. That is, until he met Angelina Jolie.

  Angie, as she’s called, was a self-described “drama queen” who, as a child in Palisades, New York, wore glasses and braces, and failed as an early model. She complained that she looked like a Muppet, all skinny and goofy. As a self-loathing teen, she started cutting herself. She lived with a boyfriend, and as Jolie boasted in too-much-information interviews, the pair was heavily involved in sado-masochistic sexual activity. She was so obsessed with death, she fantasized about becoming a funeral director, but instead attended acting classes and majored in film at New York University before dropping out to act.