Inside the Current Issue

MI IV: Life in the Family Cruise

Tony Monchinski

For all intents and purposes, Tom Cruise is the new Michael Jackson. The gloved one is off in Bahrain, working on a new album and living with the royal monarchy while his Neverland Ranch hits the auction block. Tommy Boy has risen to the occasion, more than adequately meeting our desired daily dose of inspired celebrity insanity.

The rumor mill has long swirled around Tom. Unsubstantiated are the stories of his supposed homosexuality; that the marriage to Nicole Kidman was one of convenience; and nothing less than outrageous and slanderous as the canard that Tommy is top gun when it comes to underage Filipino boys. Who can't wait for his and Nicole's adopted children Isabella and Connor to grow up, hit hard times and release tell-all autobiographies detailing the day to day chronicles of life in the family Cruise? However, for the sake of this essay, we can stick to what is known of Tom and criticize him for that alone.

Forty-three year-old Tom and 27-year-old girlfriend Katie Holmes are now the proud parents of daughter Suri. They're not married, although they say they'd like to be shortly. I begrudge them none of this. Childbearing is a wonderful in and of itself, and marriage is an overrated institution. But Tom is a Scientologist, and that opens a whole can of worms.

Scientology is the brainchild of L. Ron Hubbard. This religion holds that we are all "thetans," spiritual beings, basically good but misformed by pain and unconsciousness in life. Scientologists adhere to a belief in reincarnation of sorts, believing that thetans have existed in various forms for tens of trillions of years. Believers hold that extraterrestrial interventionist Xenu implanted Jesus and other deities into humanity's collective memory some 75 million years ago.

So far it all sounds just as wacky as any other organized religion, right? Claiming on Diane Sawyer's show that he and Katie have a "spectacular sex" life, Cruise (who also characterized newborn Suri as spectacular) denies that Holmes was forced to suck on some giant adult pacifier during the birth of their baby. He also denies that Katie wasn't able to see their baby for the first week following her birth. If true, then Cruise is breaking with orthodox Scientologist practice. Scientology posits the necessity of "silent birth" less children hear "negativity" (their mothers struggling to pass them) and develop "psychic scars." Tom's ex, Nicole, would not allow Isabella and Connor to attend the birth as Tom had requested, thinking it might be too traumatic for them.

America is a relatively free country and we're allowed to adhere to and practice a whole range of beliefs and behaviors, bizarre or otherwise. None of these Scientology shenanigans would normally bother me, except for Tom's latest forays into Comedy Central's Wednesday night programming. Warning Paramount that he would refuse to promote Mission Impossible III, Cruise was successful in having the March 15 South Park episode "Trapped in the Closet" yanked. Hyper-conglomeration aided and abetted this arrangement, as Paramount is owned by Viacom, which owns Comedy Central.

"Trapped in the Closet" mocked Cruise and his religion. Isaac Hayes, the voice of character Chef and a Scientologist himself, resigned from the show after the episode originally aired. Hayes claimed he couldn't stand South Park's irreverence to religion, when in fact he's been involved in nine seasons that have poked fun at everything and everyone from the Super Best Friends (Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Joseph Smith and other religious icons) to Jesus with his cable access TV show, not to mention Terry Schiavo and Mel Gibson. South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker let Chef walk, killing him off in a subsequent episode wherein character Kyle laments, "We shouldn't be mad at Chef for leaving us. We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains."

Stone and Parker are not allowed to comment on Cruise's influence in putting the kibosh on the rerun (there is also talk that the episode will not be included when this year's ninth season edition DVD is released). But shame on Tom Cruise and shame on Viacom. And this isn't the first time Viacom has caved under pressure; the mini-series The Reagans was cancelled when right-wingers lobbied CBS and threatened a boycott of advertisers' products. Furthermore, CBS dis-invited Janet Jackson from the Grammys following the baring of her breast during the Super Bowl.

Viacom also caved and wouldn't allow Stone and Parker to show an image of the prophet Muhammad on the show. Muslims consider images of Muhammad sacrilegious. Instead, that disputed episode was allowed to go ahead with a scene of Jesus voiding his bowls on President Bush and the US flag. What's wrong with this picture?

For the record, these decisions come under Leslie Moonves' watch. Les came up in THE ADVOCATE last issue when I discussed CBS's frivolous lawsuit against Howard Stern. Moonves and CBS-Radio have fired David Lee Roth and rumor has it they're looking at ways to get out of paying him the eight million dollars for two years his contract promised. Mornings in New York will be taken over by Opie and Anthony, currently on XM-Satellite Radio. The duo, you might recall, were fired four years ago from the same radio company for a prank in which a couple had sex in St. Patrick's Cathedral live on the air.

What message is CBS sending? That it's okay to offend Catholics and Christians, but we've got to take baby steps around Muslims and Scientologists. Give me a break!

Tom Cruise is a fine actor, but Tom Cruise is out of control. He hops up and down on Oprah's couch like I jumped on my bed when I was six. His religious beliefs have him believing he can cure someone of a heroin addiction in three days. His religious beliefs oppose psychiatry and psychology and led him to scream at Today Show's Matt Lauer that people have not been helped by prescription drugs. Now his religious beliefs have him dictating what you and I can watch.

People pooh-pooh Scientology, claiming it's just a "cult." Well, I've got news for you. Scientology is a religion. All "respected" religions started out as cults. Scientology is no wackier than any of the others, it's just not as well known. In 2,000 years there's no guessing where this thing will be. Its adherents seem to draw a lot of rich and famous people, including John Travolta, Doug E. Fresh, Kirstie Alley, Juliette Lewis and My Name is Earl's Jason Lee. These people pay a lot of money to be believers and to be "audited," hooked up to "E-meters that" measure "galvanic skin responses" with a "tone scale" of 40 signaling "serenity of beingness" and a -40 "total failure."

There have been delicious revelations from the Cruise camp in recent weeks. Tom admitted he used to hitch rides from gay prostitutes through the Holland Tunnel when he was a young, struggling actor. Tom's intelligence was called into question when he named Suri, believing her name to be Hebrew for "Princess." Linguists are now chiming in to say that the name actually means either a person from Syria or a way to tell a woman to go away. Tom can always name his daughter Bubbles.

Mission Impossible III hits theaters soon. Tom left his Suri and Katie shortly after the birth to go promote the film in Rome. I'll probably wind up going and seeing it or catching it on DVD at the very least. Again, Tom is a good actor and his handlers place him well. What's next for the new Michael Jackson? Will some unheard of skin disease turn him black? As he journeys through his fourth decade will he go berserk with the cosmetic surgery? The real mission impossible will unfold in the coming months and years as the relationship between Tom and Katie and the possibility of little "go away" having a normal life fly out the window.

Tony Monchinski is a Ph.D. student in the Political Science program.