I think it's cuz Katie Holmes is such a major downgrade from Nicole Kidman.

Of course, I also think Dakota Fanning deserves top billing over Cruise in War of the Worlds. Nothing against Cruise, but Fanning is already a much better actor. But I guess that's really about the box office draw.

Lets see... ignoring your list for a moment: 20 years difference in age, converting to scientology, Tom Cruise is behaving waaaaaay over the top emotionally in a very public fashion, they are engaged after an extremely short (6 weeks?)courtship (phew... that's a lot to ignore...).

There is an air (stench?) of "megacelebrity mid life crisis" meets "starstruk wide eyed inexperienced GIRL" to the whole thing that is unseemly. I'd hate to be watching this from her fathers perspective.

2 cents

This is a nice example of how we look goofy to the rest of the world.

Have you not heard of the formula?

If:

(Woman's age)

Then the man is a sleaze-bag.

This Cruise violates this rule:
Cruise is 41
41/2+7=27.5
Holmes is 26
QED: Cruise is a sleaze-bag

Beaty is 68
68/2+7 = 41
Bening is 47, so it's okay

Douglas is 61
61/2+7=37.5
Zeta Jones is 36
QED: Douglas is an old sleaze-bag

Scientology is not just claptrap, it amounts to an extortion racket, and has not been unwilling to visit harm on those who attempt to expose it.

That a presumably intelligent and independent young woman would embrace this pernicious nonsense means that she's not so much marrying as joining the mob. This union proves her to be a goose and her man a Svengali.

an actor is telling depressives not to take SSRI's. Great. In all likelihood, some folks are gonna DIE cause of this (cruise lied, people died?). and oh yeah saying kids with ADD shouldnt get Ritalin (which Shields said she agreed with) now what a great idea that is. A drug is overprescribed, so lets take it away from people who need it, yeah right.

Dear Mr Edison, wherever you are, could you please COME back and disinvent the movies? Theres plenty of books to keep us occupied, believe me.

How about it's creepy because Cruise has done this before? Convinced a high-profile starlet to convert to his non-mainstream religion and marry him, I mean. When it was just him and Nicole they were "eccentric". She moved on but he's repeating the pattern. Kinda makes him look like a serial kook.

"Scientology is not just claptrap, it amounts to an extortion racket, and has not been unwilling to visit harm on those who attempt to expose it."

Agreed but that sounds disturbingly like the Catholic Church, less the whole pedophelia thing. Also I dont think Scientology's leader looks (and dresses) disturbingly like Emporer Palpatine. Same guards too btw. Creepy. Tom Cruise creepy.

I think an additional factor is that there is a perception that this is a "fake" relationship. See this page, for example. No doubt many celebrity relationships exists solely for the publicity value, but this is particularly blatant. How many couples have you known who, 6 weeks into a relationship, won't say how they met each other? It's creepy. I think this, presumed, fakery, coupled with the perception that Tom Cruise has gone completely nuts, is what bothers people.

Agreed with A-ro that the issue is less the absolute size of the age gap than the relative or proportionate size-- not "27 years older" but "twice her age." It makes it worse that Holmes' defining time in the public eye was as a teenaged character, and that she still looks like a thirteen-year old (albeit a thirteen-year old with incipient crows' feet). For my money, the creepiness of older men lusting after (or, for that matter, posting lascivious pictures of!) younger women increases when the younger women look even more like jailbait than they actually are.

Because he's gay maybe?

That's what creeps me out anyway. If he wants to pick young women to act as beards, that's fine. But to marry them?

>> Because he's gay maybe?

Yes, and thus feels the need to pick the most phallic-looking landmark he can find in Europe to propose.

A summary of Scientology.

Here more about Scientology.

The RC Church doesn't charge to people to "audit" courses and wasn't started by a mediocre sci-fi writer.

I find her asymetrical facial features sexy and intriguing.

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/2930/Events/2930/KatieHolme_Count_4760104_400.jpg

It's the Scientology. It's not just a cult, it's a full-fledged brainwashing and extorsion scheme. It's not like she's becoming a Baptist or a Moslem or a Jew -- it's more equivalent to her shaving her head and moving to a commune in New Mexico.

Also, it feels incredibly fake.

I don't think it wierds people out, it just appeals to the high school geek in us. Tom Cruise is the present day "jock" who has his choice of women. For whatever reason, people feel like he (or his publicity machine) will just chew up and spit out Ms. Holmes. We feel compelled to try to save her.

It's the inner high school geeks in us.

My guess is that Cruise has a mood disorder of the bipolar type --- of course, this is only speculation. But his uncharacteristic high energy, lack of sleep (mania?), goofy grandiose comments to the media, and his long time embrace of the anti-psychiatric claims of Scientology ----raise the possibility of a mood disorder. Wouldn't it be ironic if Cruise comes to require psychiatric medication for his mental stability.

Hmm, do nuts become Scientologists, or does Scientology make some people go nuts? Heres another link.

here

All hail Xenu, or is it Xemu. Wait, mabye that's the bad space alien guy.

Tom Cruise has a new girlfriend? I guess I hadn't been paying attention. This must mean he and what's-her-name split up? Whatever...

The bigger question is who gives a damn?

Realistically speaking, if you give a flying fuck about this topic you should be spending more time with your family and friends. (That is if you have either and yes it hasn’t escaped me that I’m posting this at 1 AM on a Friday night)

it's the straw and the camel and Babylon: our society grows big with things that alarm and disgust us; for sanity's sake we try to ignore the coming monstrous birth; Cruise and the crook'd mouth naif are a premonition of the creature.
"Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all the nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornications"

Neither Benning nor Zeta-Jones was considered an ingenue at the time they "hooked up" with an older man.

Katie Holmes is a perpetual ingenue --- she's still working her "innocent and sensible good girl from Dawson's Creek" image.... Katie Holmes' image is not that of an experienced 'party girl', rather there is a sense that she is "grounded".

on the other hand, Cruise has been around since forver --- he may be only 41 (actually, he turns 43 on July 6) but he's been a huge star since Risky Business in 1983. That's forever, in celebrity terms -- and the sense that we are looking at a very experienced older man taking advantage of a "young ingenue" is palpable.

add in the whole "Scientology" stuff, and the whole thing starts to look like Holmes is under some kind of mind control....

Because his relationship history looks more and more like a gay guy taking increasingly drastic steps to cover his tracks. The Scientology stuff and his recent odd behavior just round out an already wierd picture.

What weirds me out is the number of people who take the time to post about it on a blog like this one.

yeah, i agree with anon that there is something creepy about drezner posting the crotch shot on his blog, though he is no stranger to these letcherous posts. i just wonder what his female students think about his desire for young women/girls.

We want to think of Katie as the young and innocent girl from Toledo.

After all, she is about the only good news from Toledo since Michael Owens invented the beer bottle.

Can you say "middle-aged male reviving flagging career with burst of publicity"?

I'm about three months older than Katie, and the thing that really creeps me out is that she's dating someone who was a sex symbol while we were in preschool. Preschool, fer cyrin' out loud. Fine, maybe she wasn't into him quite /that/ young, but it's hard to see having a decent relationship with someone who (1) was starstruck and (2) is that much older than you. Toss in that she's coming off a long engagement and that he's part of a brainwashing cult, and you end up with something that stinks to high heaven.

And this is any of our business how?

I think the CafePress links give us a clue as to why someone would create such an elaborate site, but if it was mine I'd make it even more "elaborate."

As for the happy couple, who gives a flying rat's behind?

Can ya'll do basic math? Katie Holmes is not twice Cruise's age. Cruise is 42, Holmes is 26. 26x2 = 52. 16 years isn't all that bad.

By comparison, Brad Pitt is 41, Angelina Jolie is (just) 30. Say 29 for the sake of comparison. That's 12 years. What's the diff?

The problem is Cruise. He's a freak. End of discussion. Hell if I was 42 and a beautiful 26 year old woman wanted to be with me, I'd be all over it.

Why does anyone care?

Because we tired of war, economics, geo-politics, domestic policy, foeign policy and etc. And after all, it is summer.

You go Dan! Even though I am a grandfather, I still occasionally like to look at a picture of a pretty girl.

If I could just remember why.............

Lovely picture Dan. I agree with just about everybody (supporting Dan's syncretic theory):
(1) TC seems like he's a closeted, self-loathing homosexual.
(2) Scientology is fuckin' wierd. I suggest the NYPost story re the Scientologist toady who is "monitoring" Katie as well as Mark's links above.
(3) Given their relative star-power, there is an apparent power imbalance that makes the age difference seem like a bigger deal than it is in the abstract (which does not apply to Pitt/Jolie, etc).
(4) TC's behavior re Katie seems unhinged.
(5) A substantial portion of the male population would really like Katie for themselves (and/or their realistic fantasy lives).

I consider my interest in their relationship to be evidence of my own shallowness and lack of worth.

A pretty young thing who is infatuated with a 41 year old man with star power. Is that so peculiar?

It just doesn't seem substantive. It is an airy, glossy, ethereal type of coupling.

Where is the maturity? Sorry, but movie stars and their relationships just don't ring true.

Get a life you f'n voyeurs! What a bunch of envious creeps.

I think it's incredibly creepy that Katie Holmes has been assigned a full-time Scientologist minder.

Real churches, and real relationships, don't involve thoughtcrime monitors.

As far as I know, Nicole Kidman never went for Scientology, and is raising their kids as Catholics.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie clearly also worked the publicity-stunt romance thing (there are always rumors about Jolie and her male costars) but they didn't go crazy about it.

Oh, and it's also incredibly creepy that Tom Cruise had a press conference all set up for after he proposed.

For my money, the creepiness of older men lusting after (or, for that matter, posting lascivious pictures of!) younger women increases when the younger women look even more like jailbait than they actually are.

Well, the whole damn human race must be creepy then. Show me an older man (or any man) that doesn't lust after younger women, even if (or rather especially if) they look like jailbait, and I'll show you a man whose sex drive has disappeared. Or he's gay. Or he's lying his ass off.

It's not very often that an older man gets to actually have a much younger woman. But just about all of them wish that they could.

Yes, and thus feels the need to pick the most phallic-looking landmark he can find in Europe to propose. -P O'Neill

Huh. I would have figured the landmark with that distinction would be the tower in Pisa.

As far as the "Cruise is old, she looks like jailbait" is concerned, I could care less. What goes on in their bedroom is none of my business, and my suspicion is that men who criticize old(er) men for lusting after younger women are mainly concerned about the competition.

Speaking as a Toledoan... This is the first thing Holms Deserves in her downward spiral.

Talk to any one from NW Ohio and it's six degrees of Katie Holmes...And guess what, not one of those stories is good.

Sorry everybody, but she was acting for Dawson's Creek. Real life Holmes is pretty awful.

Yelling at kids in Department stores. Bad mouthing people who got better parts than her when she was 10. Not leaving tips for waitresses. Nearly everyone in Toledo has a Katie Holmes story... Very few of them are good.

As a fellow Toledoan, I say if she wants to be a well paid Beard... I just don't give a damn.

One other thing.

Mr. Farr, of M.A.S.H. fame is FAR cooler than Katie Holmes. I think he has been Toledo's most sucessful export... Until Tony Packo's decides to franchise.

Unfortunatly, he's a bit of an ass as well.

The worst thing you can give a Toledoan is money. See: Noe, Holmes, Farr, the other famous embezzler guy.

Maybe I'm a cynic.