Oprah May Have Saved Tom Cruise

Leave it to Oprah to either make you famous, infamous or give you a comeback. Today, at 4 p.m. (my TiVo is broken, I had to watch in real time) I decided to stop working and plop myself on my bed for one hour. Monkey Man was napping (cue angelic choir music) and this was my time. I needed to see if Tom could redeem himself.

A little history. If you’ve been reading my blog, you may have noticed I get a little starstruck of the male persuasion. Tom Cruise was IT for me since about the age of 16. Any serious boyfriend knew he would be dumped in a second if Tom Cruise came a-knocking. My husband understood that our vows included, “’til death do us part or until Tom Cruise realizes I am the woman of his dreams.” I loved how he looked, that smile, his acting, his eyes – oh, and did I mention that smile?

Jump ahead to May 2005 – the "couch bounce" on Oprah. I sat in my parent’s living room with my 2 month-old Monkey Man and giggled nervously as I watched Tom morph into some manic, cackling man, professing his love for KATIE HOLMES. What? I had nothing against Katie Holmes, but really? Joey, from Dawson’s Creek? And, Tom, you’re jumping on Oprah’s couch on national television. At least take your shoes off. That’s just rude.

Then came his comment about Brooke Shields and postpartum depression to Matt Lauer on The Today Show. Personally, his timing sucked. Don’t mess with a woman after she’s given birth. Whether a mom has dealt with full-blown PPD or not, hormones are not in the BFF category after birth. Don’t tell a woman to treat those “feelings” with a vitamin and exercise. Obviously, Tom proved stupidity can’t be cured with Centrum and a 5 mile run.

Funny how someone I once thought was so extremely good looking became UGLY. I saw insanity in that infamous grin. His insides were showing on the outside and it was no longer pretty.

So today at 4 p.m. I gave him another chance. It was the calm, sincere, quiet Tom that I fell in love with years ago. He sat on the couch and stayed there for the hour. He addressed his PPD comment and said (I hope in honesty) that it was a mistake. He seemed to say that he understood that PPD does exist and that medication is an individual decision.

I will admit that my heart went out to him a little when he talked about Suri’s birth. I am totally of the belief that once you become a celebrity, you asked for it, and the paparazzi comes along with the paycheck. But when he talked about keeping Suri from the press and not releasing photos of her right away because they just wanted time to be with Suri and the family, I understood that. It’s a special time, and like he said in the interview, it’s time you never get back. There were a ton of rumors as to why there were no photos of Suri before the Vanity Fair spread, and that’s not fair to attack a baby. She had nothing to do with her father’s sudden looniness, or the fact that her mother would one day shed her girl-next-door Joey image and decide to become Posh Spice’s clone.

I consider myself a fairly bright person on most days of the week when the sun, moon, and Earth align and I’ve had at least 10 hours of sleep. I understand that the media is powerful and public relations can make you or break you. Tom Cruise is human – he succeeds, he fails, he loves his family, he has a personal chef. We, the public, see him the way the media edits him or the way his publicist decides to make him look on any given day. He took 3 years of slamming after his 2005 Oprah couch incident – a mixture of poor publicity and incredibly negative editing of any Tom Cruise clip the media could get its hands on. I think Oprah helped turn it around today. Tom certainly took the opportunity to go back to his quiet, boyish days, appearing humble amidst his Colorado mansion. I’m giving him another chance. I’ll go see his movies. But I’m not putting his picture back up in my locker. That space, my friends, is reserved for Rick Springfield.