Wasn’t it only last year that Tom Cruise was suing magazines over stories about him not seeing daughter Suri?
How things have changed: Google Cruise’s name and you will find 78 stories about Tom not seeing Suri for a variety of lengths of times– anywhere from a year to 540 days.
But no one has said anything. Bert Fields, attack dog lawyer for Cruise, has said not a word about anything. By now, Bert would be seething in every corner. There’s been no word from publicists denying the stories. In the old days, Pat Kingsley– who ran interference for Cruise– would have immediately set up photo ops of Tom and Suri playing on swings, shopping, holding big stuffed animals, eating ice cream etc.
This time: it’s a blank, a dead hole.
What’s going on? It does seem that Tom has let the cult of Scientology block him from seeing Suri. What kind of person doesn’t see a 7 year old for more than a week? month? three months? It’s either a year or that 540 days. And this is a person with resources beyond description: private planes are to Tom Cruise what the A train is to us plebes. Not only that: Katie Holmes moved to Calabasas, California, a 30 minute drive in traffic from Cruise’s Beverly Hills manse. It’s not like they live oceans away from each other.
When Katie first hooked up with Tom in 2005 and had Suri — who turns 9 next week– they all lived with Cruise’s sisters and mother. All of those women had joined Scientology and jumped on Cruise’s gravy train. Tom’s sister Lee Ann came to New York and met with me, then sent me a “gift” of a three panel Scientology indoctrination in a box. I cherish it to this day. Suri knew all those people until Katie “escaped” from Cruise over July4th weekend in 2012. She hasn’t seen any of them either, ever again.
Scientology is clearly not for families. Today’s headlines are about how cult leader David Miscavige had a private investigator spy on his own father. Everything is open for discussion now thanks largely to Lawrence Wright and Alex Gibney’s book and documentary, “Going Clear.” What remains to be known is how the movie going public will react to Cruise “disconnecting” from his 9 year old because crazy people have told to do it.
You’ve got to feel sorry for Tom. He joined Scientology to get something family like out of it. And now he’s had 3 failed marriages and he’s separated from his youngest child. Those couldn’t have been his goals.