Tom, Meet Alan

So it seems that Tom Cruise is all over the news and the media these days. I know! It's like he's famous now! And he's been acting a little, shall we say, exuberant. Like "Exuberant." Like a ten-cent soda doesn't cost a dime.

I'm sticking a pin in his faux-mance with Katie Holmes, cooked up by cynical movie-whoring motherfuckers to build up publicity for their two summer-blockbusters-that-won't-be, Batman Begins and March of the Penguins. (Just kidding. Tom is in War of the Worlds. March of the Penguins is a doc about the 70-some mile journey Antarctic emperor pens make every year to hatch and raise their young. Looks worth seeing. That's one.) We'll put his Oprah-fied exuberance on the wall for a later date. So, too, his exuberance for using the legal profession as a razor-sheathed club with which to beat those who suggest he's less than All Man.
No, the exuberance we're discussing is his relentless railing aginst the perceived evils in the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries. Tom Cruise is a Scientologist who, we are told, had a less-than-satisfactory childhood. His faith and his belief systems are hius own. But his relentless adherence to a party line that psychs are evil, it's a pseudoscience, all drugs are dangeroudsly addictive, etc., puts me in mind of another charismatic public figure who may very well be out of his mind:

Tom Cruise, meet Alan Keyes.

Mr. Keyes is a hard-line, family-values conservative Republican from Maryland who, among his other hijinks, parachuted into Illinois last summer to run the Worst Senate Campaign Ever for the vacant seat which was won by Democrat Barack Obama by a roughly 20,00-to-1 margin. Oh, and both of these gentlemen are black. (Keyes and Obama, I mean. Duh, Tom.)
Keyes said a lot of inflammatory things during his campaign, playing to the far right of the Republican party (probably wise, he wasn't going to get anywhere else in Illinois), saying Christ would vote for him based on Obama's pro-choice stance, and labeling gays, the Vice President's daughter included, "selfish hedonists," while apparently blind to the fact that his own daughter was coming out via a tortured-sounding blog of her own at the time.

So. Two charismatic, successful men. And look at them! Point and laugh! Because both Cruise and Keyes, who may have absolutely no more in common than this, are men of seemingly inshakable principles, who get points for standing tall in their beliefs while the scenery topples behind them.
And then they get those points taken away, and immediately, for being absolutely batshit insane.

Yes, whether you're trashing gays for their selfishness or trashing depressed post-partum mothers for, well, their selfishness, you're guaranteed the ink, it seems. So is that why they did it? Publicity? Cred? I don't think so. Remember:Bat. Guano. Cuckoo.

Tom, meet Alan. Now go away, the both of you.