A great rebuff

Someone on one of the depression discussion boards I read posted this great transcript from the Craig Fergueson Late Late Show. I think it is brilliant and expresses a lot of the holes in Tom's argument which I didn't even think about. It is not the exact transcript, I believe, but close enough. Enjoy!


"Tom Cruise, is off his medication. Haven't you seen him lately? He's all angry and in your face, yelling, screaming, blowing up at everyone... and he's giving medical advice too. Saying how medications and therapy aren't going to help you, because they just mask everything and that they're just a crutch. He was talking about Ritalin by the way... as a parent, I hope his children don't get diagnosed with attention deficite disorder.So umm, he's going on and on, and I started thinking back to when I was in rehab. Some guy in rehab said how this wasn't going to work, why was he here? This is just a crutch. I thought about it and I said, 'ya know what? You're right, it is a crutch. And I NEED IT!' It's like you see a man walking down the street, leaning on a crutch because he has only one leg. You're not going to walk up to him, yank the crutch away from him and say 'you have one leg, adapt damn you!' No, you're going to leave him alone. Let him get by the way he has to in order TO get by. You don't walk up to a person wearing glasses, snatch away their glasses and say 'you're blind, deal with it!'. No, you let them wear the glasses so they can go about living an ordinary life. Now what I'm getting at here, is not that Tom Cruise is a bad actor, by any means. Or that he deserves no respect at all. Oh he can jump out of planes, he can race around on a boat, he can do whatever... except the last Samurai... that wasn't a good movie.. but that's okay, he's allowed one box office flop. My point is, that there are people out there to give medical advice. They are not called 'actors'. They are called 'doctors', they are called 'nurses' they are called 'care-givers'... If I've been shot and I'm bleeding in the street I don't want some actor running up to me with a bunch of herbs and a purple cloth...I WANT AN AMBULANCE! Ya get what I'm saying. So Tom, stick to dancing around in your underwear, leave the medication and therapy to the MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS." "

So that's that. And I probably don't need to ask you, but here is my humble request.I have a serious request for all of you. Please do NOT go to see War of the Worlds this weekend. I know that not all you are as passionatly mad at Tom Cruise as I am, but please take a small stand agains his rants against the field of psychiatry by showing that his insanity is not good publicity but truly just insanity. (and yes, this is the same thing I have written in my profile.) Pass it on! If you know someone who is considering going to see this, just ask them to wait a week or two so that the opening numbers at least will be low. Thank you!

That's all I have the energy for tonight. I'm still ruminating on those movies I recently saw. So stay tuned!