Fizzled vs. Fired

It's depressing that the tastiest bits of news one can find lately, even without scrounging, are celebrity-related. It's not as though George Bush was caught wearing an "Osama Who?" t-shirt or finally went to court because he's a douchebag. No, I have to be satisfied, nay - elated even - that Tom Cruise was fired. Or as CNN.com reports his business partner Paula Wagner put it, negotiations just fizzled.

Specifically, Viacom, who owns Paramount, says they ended their 14-year relationship with Cruise's company because of the image he's created for himself within the last year. They even slid by slandering him, saying they "like him personally," though, for some reason, being a raging egomaniac is bad business.

Sure, Tom's films have grossed assloads (literally, I've done the math) of cash for Paramount and, therefore, Viacom. But at the same time, he hasn't been performing quite up to standards, in the ratio of money spent to money earned back. Yet his company insists it's just one of those things, you know, that happens.

Firstly, a deal with one of the biggest, or formerly biggest, stars in Hollywood, is hardly something you let slip through the cracks. Hell, even Sony is holding on to the Wayans brothers, though no one can figure out why. There is no way in this world that even Viacom, headed in all probability by some type of fallen angel, would let someone as big as Tom Cruise get away unless the things he was doing created a big enough image problem as to threaten the profits of Paramount pictures, who is as used to the teeter-totter of bankruptcy and fortune as any company in Hollywood.

All Tom can do now is sort of flit about, a moth so drawn to the flame of fame that he's slowly baking. Sure, Tom could admit that he, master of the box office, is quickly becoming poison because of some PR missteps, to put it lightly. But that would involve admitting that, in all likelihood, almost everything positive or intriguing we've heard about Tom this year has been completely machine-generated. Of the fans he has left, only those obsessed with the fallacy of Tom's God-like infallibility would stay aboard for Tom's next films.

So for now, we live with the lie - which, realistically, is nothing. We shouldn't care. But as with Mel, we do. We don't want our money go to liars. And yet we still pay taxes.