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.
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!