I’ll leave it to the tabloids to dig up the intimate details of Tom Cruise’s Eiffel Tower wedding proposal to Katie Holmes. I’m more interested in how Today and Good Morning America, the two programs engaged in a death match for a place at the nation’s breakfast table, covered the TomKat merger.
First strike: GMA placed TomKat early in its news lineup, with a piece that aired at 7:04 am and ran just under two minutes. Today’s story of nearly identical length didn’t run until 7:18 am.
Extended followup: Again, GMA struck first, running a reaction piece with substitute host Bill Weir interviewing Us magazine’s Katrina Szish at 7:31am; the coverage lasted just under three minutes. Today, meanwhile, didn’t get back to Cruise-Holmes until 8:11 am, with Matt Lauer interviewing MSNBC’s Allison Stewart and People’s Larry Hackett for slightly less than five minutes.
Best scoop: As if getting MSNBC’s Stewart on Cruise’s private train wasn’t enough, Today also got an audio snippet of Cruise over the locomotive’s loudspeakers, telling passengers to ”be afraid, be very afraid.”
Best graphics: Today’s map of France, showing the ”Live from the World Cruise” route from Paris to Marseilles, was a camp classic.
Funniest comment: Lauer’s ”If it’s a publicity stunt, it’s gone too far.”
Best way to save next week’s Cruise interview: Katie Couric’s response, ”I think they seem to be very happy — and I wish them a lot of happiness.”
Strangest comment: Weir’s ”They called a press conference to announce this. Maybe it’s some sort of Jedi mind trick where instead of being recluse, dodgy celebrities, they’re gonna lay it all out there.”
Most excessive hyperbole: In the midst of news about the war in Iraq and California’s flurry of earthquakes, Stewart calling the engagement of two film stars ”an earth-shattering announcement.”
For that, dear readers (not to mention Weir’s gratuitous Star Wars reference), methinks GMA wins this round of The Morning-Show Bakeoff.
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As though the world couldn’t get any weirder, the unthinkable has happened! Tom “I love this woman” Cruise and Katie “umm, where am I?” Holmes are now engaged. You know what this means don’t you? It means that for the next three month or the duration of the marriage, which ever comes first, we’re going to be forced to watch Bennifer all over again. Only this time with yodeling and couch gymnastics, two new sports brought to the forefront by Oprah and our buddy Tom.
But the weirdest thing about all this are the earthquakes. Did anybody else notice that all these earthquakes seem to coincide with all the TomKat lovin? Somebody bust out the Scientology User Manual and let me know if earthquakes are a sign of impending world domination. And if they are, I comin’ for you Mr and Mrs Cruise. You hear me? I’m comin for you!
“Happiness” gone too far! This is crazy. What happened to celebrities wanting private lives? George Clooney needs to sit TomKat down and give them a good talking too. This is just too much and actually too hard to believe as true.
Wasn’t Paris the place Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers spent their honeymoon?
Somone needs to remind Tom that he can’t handle the truth…bizzaro
I never thought I would say this, but I miss Bennifer.
I wish we could all just forget the less than admirable lives of our beloved celebs. Has it ever occured to anyone with half a brain that these people are all NUTS? Its sad that I actually had nothing better to do than not read the blog and post a comment, but c’mon people is this really newsworthy?! Leave ‘em alone for all that is holy!
please make it stop!!!
What’s with the Sharpie?
Atleast Bennifer tried to stay OUT of the press jeez it’s so annoying now….
There’s something about this that I just can’t turn from: it’s like a fatal car accident that I just keep gawking at. I’ve always been into pop culture, but I can’t remember being so enthralled in a sick way by a celebrity “relationship” before. And I’ve always been a huge Tom Cruise fan, but now I think the man is bizarre and creepy. I honestly think he’s brainwashed the poor girl and now he has young arm candy plus a new convert to his wacky, cultish religion.
What Tom doesn’t know is…. Brooke Shield’s doctor used that SAME EXACT Sharpie to write her prescription for anti-depressants. Beware, Tom, beware!
Tom has so much nerve ripping on Brooke Shields. What did she do to him? Her life is none of his business. When I’m over that, maybe I can then begin to process this whole engagement stuff. Hey Tom, didn’t Rod Stewart just propose at the top of the Eiffel Tower like a month ago?
Tom Cruz, er Cruise, is such a loser! He leaves his first wife because of…who knows!? He leaves the mother of his children…and his children, because…he’s a loser! He leaves Penelope, because…who knows?! He leaves Katie because…oh, sorry, I must have been going back to the future……..
I think that we shouldn’t be so quick to judge, at least he is trying to be open about his relationship, unlike Brad Pitt, who will only say “he knows his own truth”, we all think it is weird when someone admits how happy he is, but do you remember how you felt when you had been seeing someone for 2 months? Giddy and in love,..I think what he has been doing is refreshing,..and everyone else just seems to think he is weird,..in my eyes, I think more of Tom Cruise now.
I can honestly say I have never seen two people more publicity hungry than these two. Little Katie wanted to be a star and now she is being rail-roaded into marrying her nutcase-pretend-boyfriend. Tom wanted to be the stud of the year and now just looks like an old pathetic fool.
Exactly why the media is buying this I honestly don’t know, but they clearly aren’t the brightest bunch.
Someone please, just make these two losers go away. Now!
The only way we could make these losers go away is to boycott all their movies and stop reading their news items (except blogs that tell the truth!). So everytime we see a pic of him, divert our attention to somewhere else!
I think Tom needs to grow up and get over his mid-life crisis. He’s old enough to be her father. She is nothing more than a star-struck groupie. The tip off was the comment about having a poster of him in her room when she was growing up and wanting to marry him (or did I just imagine hearing this). Obviously she is still a baby herself or she wouldn’t want a guy with multiple failed marriages who jumps on furniture like a 2 year old. Neither of them will ever have the class of Nicole Kidman.
i think she needs more time to ask herself of what she’s going to get into.
Hey katie! go back to Dawson’s Creek where you belong! You’re a terrible actress, and Tom is just into you ’cause he’s hungry…hungry for publicity!…and other stuff…
Cory- with all due respect, you’re a moron. “Not sure how he manages to keep this secret — Scientology’s reach must be far and wide.” Conspiracy theory 101: the conspiracy theorist will claim some highly secretive, nearly omnipotent institution has the power to cover up most of the evidence of an alleged action or event. Indeed, the lack of evidence pervesely strengthens their conviction that very powerful forces are at work.
Here’s my opinion on the topic, as if it matters: I don’t really care. What troubles me is how much people are interested in this, or say they’re put off by it. The amount of vitrol and cynicism directed at this relationship, and for baseless reasons. People are now suggesting that the water prank was in fact a secret publicity stunt set up by Cruise’s handlers to win back the sympathy of the masses. This makes just about as much sense as engaging someone in order to promote WOTW and BATMAN BEGINS.
“What troubles me is how much people are interested in this, or say they’re put off by it.”
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have shoved this nonsense in the front of every camera they could possibly find. Why are you then so surprised that people are so put off by it? It is such an obvious display of publicity hogging that is is laughable.
That is where the animosity comes from – not to mention the fact that he is behaving like a nutcase, and she like a brainwashed teenager.
How can anyone take this nonsense seriously?
Jennifer,
You are truly a moron. Pull your head out from your arse and get a life.
Tom Cruise proves that there is no fool like an old fool. He auditions women to be his next as a publicity stunt to promote his movie and chose Katie Holmes who is in need of publicity to promote hers. The idea that Mr. Cuise would appear on shows making a fool of himelf is unseemly. That Katie Holmes would make a fool of herself to ruin her image as a nice Catholic girl and to go whole hog to embrace Mr. Cruise’s psuedo-religion and a bogus romance just to promote a movie and the hope of having a larger career is pitiful. Miss Holmes will be severely hurt in this stunt where she should have just kept her head and continued to be a nice Catholic girl with the acting roles that come from it. Now she won’t be able to be taken seriously and Tom Cruise will roll on to the next stunt going deeper into acting like a fool.
I also would not put it past Tom Cruise to have hired the guy with the squirting microphone in London as another publicity stunt. The event was too convenient and his reaction to prepared for it not to be a staged stunt.
Maybe Katie just completes Tom. Maybe he had her at hello…
maybe we are all just jealous?
Oprah is repeating Tom’s show this Thursday. What a wonderful day it will be!! More people will see what a brain washed idiot he really is. Tell all your friends..yippee. See Oprah luvs us after all!!
Hi, I found this document about $cientology and celebs etc.. It’s very interesting and scary too.
it’s here…
http://www.xs4all.nl/~fishman/fable.htm
You guys are a riot man, I love it. I agree with everyone but Jennifer – Tom is now a bonafide whack-job, and Katie is a hopelessly brainwashed dipwad who just wanted to be in the big leagues. Well she sure is now, she better enjoy what’s left of her credibility. I’m still fuming at his arrogance in what he said about Brooke, prescription medication and psychiatry. Does the jerk have any idea how antidepressants and therapy have literally given people their lives back? Heck, Katie will probably need both when this is all over. I used to be a huge Tom Cruise fan, he’s from my state, but I’m done with him and his theories and his cult recruitment. I am generally suspicious of a religion that has to constantly trumpet itself, billions of people worship faithfully without trying to sell their religion to others, so SHUT YER PIEHOLE TOM CRUISE. Go do what you want with who you want, but don’t make us have to hear it and see it constantly, we’re sick of it and sick of you.
http://www.lermanet2.com/scientologynews/latimes/lat-1e.htm
The L.A. Times was sued by the Church of Scientology for revealing the actual beliefs of Scientology. Everyone should read this and educate themselves as much as they possibly can on the cult of Scientology.
Do a google search about Scientology and Clearwater, Florida.