In other news, I've concluded Tom Cruise is nuts:
It has been a quarter-century since Tom Cruise was a bit player - and Brooke Shields the star - in the angst-filled teen romance movie "Endless Love." Now, both are in their 40s and have gone their separate ways: Cruise to box-office stardom and evangelizing for Scientology, and Shields to television sitcom and Broadway success, as well as motherhood and a new book about her battle with postpartum depression.
But in an exclusive interview to be aired Thursday on "Access Hollywood," Cruise tells host Billy Bush that Shields was misguided when she took the anti-depressant Paxil to fight her depression after giving birth to daughter Rowan - which Shields recounts in her memoir, "Down Came the Rain"
Cruise, who zealously preaches the Church of Scientology's hatred of all mind-altering drugs, tells Bush: "Here is a woman, and I care about Brooke Shields because I think she is an incredibly talented woman. You look at, where has her career gone?"
I didn't know that Shields' career was in trouble. She's currently starring in the London production of "Chicago." Her PR rep didn't return my call.
The 42-year-old Cruise sat down with Bush - for interviews to be broadcast all this week - as part of a surprising publicity campaign hyping his romance with 26-year-old starlet Katie Holmes.
"These drugs are dangerous. I have actually helped people come off," Cruise maintains to Bush. "When you talk about postpartum, you can take people today, women, and what you do is you use vitamins. There is a hormonal thing that is going on, scientifically, you can prove that. But when you talk about emotional, chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that. You can use vitamins to help a woman through those things."
Maybe the whole PR offensive will be a vitamin boost to his career. Lloyd Grove's column
You don't have to be a disgusting sack of excrement to be a Democrat, but it helps:
Al Gore listened when President Bill Clinton raged in 1998 that the GOP impeachment attempt was a "a f--ing coup d'état." But, according to "The Survivor," a new book about the Clinton years by author John F. Harris, Gore showed little sympathy for his running mate.
"In 1992, I provided the moral energy for Clinton to win," Harris quotes Gore as telling his own campaign adviser in 2000. "This year he's sapping the moral energy of my campaign."
Other White House staffers were willing to cover the President's tracks.
"When Clinton gravitated toward an attractive woman in a crowd, or vice versa, [one aide] would try to angle his way close to make sure he was in the line of sight of any cameras," Harris writes.
Chief of staff Leon Panetta once canceled a presidential meeting with Barbra Streisand lest it feed speculation about a relationship.
As for Monica Lewinsky, White House aide Rahm Emanuel (now a congressman from Illinois) said he once told the President, "You got it backwards. You messed around with a Jewish girl, and now you're paying a goyish lawyer. You should have messed around with a goyish girl and gotten a Jewish lawyer."
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/312007p-266922c.html
MOVING faster than the speed of sound, Tom Cruise is ready to take his relationship with Katie Holmes to the next level, pals say. One source notes that Cruise — who went public with his relationship with the "Batman Begins" cutie after just two weeks and has been publicly swooning over her ever since — is "talking marriage." The A-list star tells friends, "it's happening," and wants to tie the knot with Holmes. Strangely, however, he can't seem to remember how they met. Sources say that at last week's "Oprah" taping, Cruise hesitated and stammered when the question was posed to him — not once, but twice. Then he went overboard, dropping to his knees to confess his love for Holmes to Oprah before bringing her out for a surprise appearance. Lee Anne DeVette, Cruise's spokes-sister, said the report of stammering was untrue and declined to comment on the potential marriage. "Watch the 'Oprah' show to see what Tom says about how he feels about Katie," she offered. (Page Six)
The major news networks really aren't biased, though:
WE HEAR . . . THAT the Beltway crowd is buzzing over Tim Russert's softball interrogation of Howard Dean on "Meet the Press" on Sunday. Said one observer: "The Democrats were terrified of how Dean would do, but Russert — famed for grilling people till they are fried — basically tanked and asked no follow-up questions, leaving Dean relatively unscathed." (Page Six)