Tommygun

In today's Slate Edward Jay Epstein weighs in on the current Tom Cruise feeding-frenzy, noting that an informal People magazine poll finds an unscientific 62 percent of respondents presume Tom's hysterical crowing about his romance with Katie Holmes to be a publicity stunt. (The other choice was "True Romance.") Epstein observes that once this " statistically meaningless result" went public, "it spawned a frenzy of stories dangling the bizarre idea that the romance had been faked to publicize" Cruise and Holmes' respective new movies.

While I suspect this is at least partially true—Cruise is a very savvy dealmaker—may I run the risk of incuring his wrath (or at least, that of his legal team) by daring to suggest that, as with so much self-generated Cruise news, this latest round of ballyhoo is calculated to proclaim once more the irrefutable evidence of our Tommy's utter, utter, jubilant heterosexuality?

Why else would a man his age bounce off so many teevee studio walls like a love-struck adolescent? Why else make such a bona fide fool of himself?

We may be forgiven if, along with our eye-rolling disgust, we also sense the fine Italian hand of Tom's Scientology handlers.

Let me state, for the record (and for any of the minions of Tom Cruise, Inc.* who happen to espy this little speculative essay) that I am not alleging or asserting anything about Tommy's proclivities. While I admit to hearing some interesting data on the subject from an unimpeachable source, as they used to say in the '70s, neither I nor anyone not intimately involved with Mr. Cruise can say with any certainty what (or whom) he does in his off-hours. And in a sense it doesn't matter. If Cruise were to begin spouting off at every opportunity about the evils of homosexuality, it would matter. Denying you're queer is one thing, however sad. Going after your own is something altogether else. (Did I mention that I'm asserting nothing about Tom Cruise's sexuality? Just checking. Don't want to give those kindly lawyers at TCI any cause for concern. Heh-heh-heh.)

It is, however, a well-documented fact of life in these here United States—or in Los Angeles anyway, residence in which Gore Vidal assures us still constitutes living abroad—that Scientology depends for its very existence on a captive membership. Not, perhaps, literally (although there have been allegations) but its recruiting officers are busily engaged in ferreting out whatever "dirt" can be discovered about local celebrities, all the better to blackamil you with, my dear. This is particularly crucial when it comes to the big names. The bigger the name, the deeper the digging. And the bigger the name the more prominence his or her devotion to the cul—er, religion—must be given in interviews and other attendant publicity.

Again, I'm not saying that Tom Cruise or John Travolta are homosexual—Heaven forefend and perish the thought! Truly, Your Honor—but isn't it interesting that, as their respective stars have risen, so too has the vigor of their public devotion to Scientology? Travolta even managed to get some poor shmucks to finance an L. Ron Hubbard-based fantasy flick a few years back, the reverberations from which bomb are still being felt along the Pacific Coast Highway.

Hence—perhaps—the recent spectacle Tommy Boy has been making of himself for the alternatively star-struck and cynical members of the press. He couldn't be more ludicrous if he made his appearances draped in gold lame and shrieking, "I'm straight! I'm straight! I'm really really really really straight!" with a manical grin. (Thinks: are those teeth, like Betty Grable's gams, insured? And does he have any idea how frightened he looks when he flashes them?)

Like most of the self-serving prattle one hears from Out There, as Dorothy Parker used to call it, I suspect Mr. Cruise's rather pathetic outbursts are designed to serve both God (or whatever it is Scientologists worship) and mammon. In any case, Tom's publicists must be damping their beetled brows: if the public—or the readers of People anyway—can be counted on to believe their client's antics serve as transparent cover for hype, said public will certainly look no deeper for a motive.

Hooray for Hollywood.