Tom Cruise

"You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do." (Tom Cruise to Matt Lauer on the Today Show)

Does anyone remember those old TV commercials, starring Chad Everett, pushing some product like aspirin?

"I'm not a doctor but I play one on TV."

What's more ridiculous -- the fact that this statement merely points out his illegitimacy as a spokesperson for aspirin, or the aspirin-manufacturer's arrogant belief in the gullibility of the American population?

Probably a little of both.

We consider ourselves savvy. Sure, Oprah can rocket a book up the charts, but we Americans simply will not accept any old concept these rich movie stars try to foist on us anymore.

Or will we? Tell me the truth. Ten years ago, would you ever have imagined Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California? You were thinking the whole Jessie Ventura, Minnesota thing was a fluke, weren't ya? Me too.

By now, however, I'm jaded. For instance, I wouldn't have been overly surprised, recently, to hear that Mel Gibson had been elevated to Pope.

If you watch Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson talk about their projects on television, they both come off as . . . intense is too nice a word. Crazy. That fits. I remember watching Mel talk to Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America when he was doing publicity for "The Passion of the Christ." He had that same sort of pit bull defensiveness that Tom Cruise gets when he talks about Scientology. I was yelling "Run Diane, Run!" And Diane did look like she wanted to run at one point. She really did.

So, in perspective, Tom's humorless pontificating and monkey-bar antics aren't as unique as we may be making them out to be. It could just be his reaction to Arnie and Mel. After all, they're up there in the earning department, huge egos, though Arnie is sidelined for now. Maybe Tom feels if Mel can blab about his religion and make hundreds of millions of dollars, and Arnie gets to own California, why is Pat Kingsley telling him to keep his mouth shut about Scientology on the red carpet?

Annnnd . . . Scientologists believe we are descended from space aliens who lived inside volcanoes and Tom's new movie - The War of the Worlds - has an almost identical theme. It's a perfect example of "publissuety" -- using your clout to stump your cause.

Movie stars spend their lives reading lines off pieces of paper which tell them who they are and what they are going to say. They don't have to learn anyone else's lines but their own. In some cases, they don't even have to learn their own lines. Should they find themselves unable to memorize for anything under $15 million and ten percent of the front end, a teleprompter is wheeled in.

However, once they achieve the adoration of millions of people, which was their original goal -- oh they'll say it wasn't, but it so was -- it's incumbent on them to remember that power corrupts.

And, as Barbara Walters might say in a celebrity interview, "Abso-wute pow-ah co-wups abso-wute-wee."

You know, I really think that Brooke Shields might be wrong about Tom Cruise. I mean about him not being able to give birth. I believe he just might be able to do it. You see, that's the one thing we truly don't know about Tom Cruise yet.

Is he able to give birth?

If there's one thing I've learned in life it's that truth is stranger than fiction. In my opinion, it's entirely possible that Tom Cruise is a space alien capable of whelping his own young. Honestly, he has always struck me as alien-like. And male space aliens, in some cases, can give birth.

At least that's what I've been told.