In which we Become a Celebrity News Blog

So how about all this Tom Cruise hullabaloo? All the moral vindication of mourning Heath Ledger without all the dulling "I'm a hollow husk of a human being" side-effects of placing idle bets as to when Britney's gonna shuffle off, sans culottes, into the ether. But this whole Scientology business? With Anonymous's's "threatening" youtube video? In response to Tom Cruise's's flipping out over his spf or whatevs? What is up with that? Is there some kind of turf war? Has the internet gone all Warriors? That would be awesome. FUN MINI GAME: DESIGN THE ELEVENNAMES GANG OUTFIT.
I am uncomfortable, though, with the idea of a bunch of people essentially terrorizing a slightly legitimate religion, in much the same way I am uncomfortable with the Westboro Baptist Church being criminalized. I wouldn't mind too much, of course, but it sets a dangerous precedent that we as a culture would inevitably fuck up to justify whatever kind of skullfuckingly inhuman atrocity our most deviant minds can come up with.

So, I mean, can we just get along? Maybe? No?

The real problem I have with the whole scientology thing that's out there is Tom Cruise. It's a testament to the man's celebrity power that when he acts like an idiot, people stand up and take notice. John Travolta and Kirstie Allie (and maybe Will Smith?) cannot arouse this level of interest and attention in popular media, because they seem too wholesome or well-balanced. No, it takes a truly disturbed and charismatic individual to peak our interests, as any internet satanist (or even worse, aforementioned Westboro Baptists, whom I despise too much to even link) everywhere will tell you.

It's the tyranny of our own sick fascinations. Tom Cruise is a handsome man (he still looks like he did in effing Legend!), who is rich and powerful. Will Smith, Kirstie Allie, and John Travolta all have terrible flaws to them, weaknesses we use to reaffirm their human status as flawed, struggling individuals. Rich, handsome, energetic Tom Cruise exists like one of the aliens he doubtlessly worships, a strange visitor that normal humans can't quite understand. And what we do not understand we humans hate and destroy. I'd feel much better about the whole arrangement, too, if Tom Cruise were devoted to some sort of non-hateful sect of an established religion, instead of the warily litigious Church of Scientology, last seen in the public eye making South Park edit their one episode where Chef goes away. So it's easy to hate them.

The hullabaloo, then, becomes a function of a highly visible (insane) celebrity with and intensely unlikable church that relies as much on lawyers as it does on belief. Tom Cruise is the focal image, then, that we can use to view the event, much in the same way that the image of devastated african americans "looting" from a sunken grocery store is what we remember of Hurricane Katrina. Which is, of course, always inaccurate to my thinking - things are always so much more complex than our brains are wired to understand (thanks Google) for whatever reason, and that these oversimplifications are the starts of where wacky, obviously flawed rumors become agreed-upon facts. Without concrete knowledge of anything, then, it is impossible to make a rational judgement.

And we know this, as people. If you question your perceptions, everything is suspect. But that doesn't mean that we, as a culture or as an anonymous, don't take such suppositions seriously. The same sort of groupthink fever becomes widespread around elections and football games - it's just a function of our identity as human beings.

Anyway, my current identity is of "tired guy who can't write for shit today", so let's stop this where it is, and I bid you good day.