Brad Pitt’s mom and Angelina Jolie’s dad have more in common than we knew. Jane Pitt has written an incendiary letter to her local newspaper in Springfield, Missouri. A Christian, she is advocating that other Christians get over Mitt Romney being a Mormon and vote for him. She doesn’t like President Obama and doesn’t approve of gay marriage.

If Pitt and Jolie and marry this summer, Jane can sit with Jon Voight, who’s become a very vocal conservative. I have more sympathy now for Brad Pitt than ever before. Yikes. He and Angie are the political polar opposites of their parents. Thanksgiving dinner must be a blast. And to think, this is the woman the tabloids kept saying was so close to Jennifer Aniston. They should also introduce Jane to Mel Gibson’s dad.

Jane Pitt wrote in the Springfield News-Leader:

“I have given much thought to Richard Stoecker’s letter (“Vote for Mormon against beliefs,” June 15). I am also a Christian and differ with the Mormon religion. But I think any Christian should spend much time in prayer before refusing to vote for a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian conviction concerning homosexuality just because he is a Mormon. Any Christian who does not vote or writes in a name is casting a vote for Romney’s opponent, Barack Hussein Obama — a man who sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church for years, did not hold a public ceremony to mark the National Day of Prayer, and is a liberal who supports the killing of unborn babies and same-sex marriage. I hope all Christians give their vote prayerful consideration because voting is a sacred privilege and a serious responsibility.”

An email has just gone out from Jonathan Wolfe, one of Katie Holmes’s attorneys. He writes: “The reports about an emergent filing last Friday are incorrect.  Other than her action for divorce, the only pending application filed by Ms. Holmes remains her request for an anonymous caption.” Apparently, Hollywoodlife.com, a tabloid site, claimed a scoop that Holmes had secured a July 17th court date in New York for emergency custody. But it’s not true, like so many of the tabloid stories about Cruise and Holmes over the last week or so.

In more news on this subject: TMZ has chosen sides. They’ve gone with the Tom Cruise spin. Just today, they’ve taken an aggressive pro-Cruise position, claiming that Katie is using Suri as a weapon in the divorce. They’ve also decided that the divorce is not about Scientology, after all, and that Katie was very happy with the so called religion.

This is hilarious beyond description. But is is also why Holmes chose to file in New York, and got New York lawyers. I just hope these non-Hollywood lawyers are really prepared for what Cruise and his team are capable of in the spin-and-win department. They’ve already co-opted TMZ, which is major. They have already locked down Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood. Next up will be the syndicated TV shows. Watch the spin. It’s going to get ugly.

This picture of Regis Philbin at the end of the Macys fireworks special on NBC–this was during a break, taken by me–isn’t completely in focus. But I liked it because Regis was a sport all night, chatting with everyone, making sure all these “regular” people felt comfortable. He also posed with a lot of service men, various military and Navy guys, and about a dozen “Uncle Sams” standing on red white and blue stilts for hours on end. Not too many celebs in the VIP area: just Marcus Sameuelsson, Francine LeFrak and Rick Friedberg, and then Mayor Bloomberg traipsed in with a huge entourage. Patron Tequila was being given out free. There was no water anywhere. Someone told us that Macy’s in New York is going to have a $500 million overhaul. It needs it. The main floor looks like Sodom after Gommorah came by for dinner. Regis is missed on TV, that’s for sure…

…Meanwhile Wyclef Jean put on some show over at Pier 92. The place was packed. No one minded. There was lots of dancing in the heat. Clef played all his hits and gave a shout out to Lauryn Hill, his one time fellow Fugee. He did some freestylin’ political rap, and there were quite a few Haitians digging the scene. Later, Lil Jon came on –separate show– and the place got very rowdy. Someone cut up pillows, sending wet, hot smelly goose down feathers everywhere all over the place. A fight almost broke out by the stage, but Lil Jon spoke directly to the participants from the stage and shut it down. Freedom! This what the revolutionaries fought for! I hope they’re happy now…

I wrote this story on March 8,. 2001. When Tom Cruise filed for divorce against Nicole Kidman a month earlier, the papers told a very stark story. Cruise tried to backdate his marriage to make it seem like it hadn’t lasted 10 years. It’s instructive to read this now, as Cruise prepares a rebuttal to Katie Holmes’s divorce filing. Cruise is using the same lawyers so far that he used in vs. Kidman: Dennis Wasser, and Cruise’s regular attorney, Bert Fields. Each of them had ties to now imprisoned private investigator Anthony Pellicano before he went to jail. Pellicano spied on Kidman. Holmes–so it’s alleged in the tabloids–is now being spied on herself.

From March 8, 2001:

Tom Cruise Divorce Move Could Cost Nicole Plenty

Those who wonder what caused Tom Cruise to file for divorce so swiftly, at last here is an answer.

Under California divorce law, a couple married less than 10 years is not considered to have been in a “long term marriage.” Cruise filed his papers on February 7, citing the length of his marriage to Nicole Kidman at exactly nine years and 11 months. The Cruises were married on December 24, 1990; Cruise claims the couple separated in “December 2000.”

This would refute claims made in other publications that the Cruises renewed their wedding vows on Christmas Eve.

Donna Weaver, an expert family attorney in Hollywood, explained to me: “This gives a presumption that spousal support should not be considered.” In other words, Cruise is asking the court not to force him to pay alimony to Kidman. If he’d hesitated much longer, Kidman would have had a much stronger case to cash in on their ten years together a possible $300 million net worth.

On his divorce filing, Cruise also checked off box marked 7g, which indicates that he wants the court to enjoin Kidman from receiving alimony. He also checked off two boxes regarding custody of the couple’s children Isabelle and Conor indicating his desire to have a strong participation in their lives. “He wants more than visitation,” Weaver said.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,976,00.html#ixzz1zin1lj11

OK, your wife has just pulled a public exit, and taken your six year old daughter with her to a new apartment. Do you a) fly directly to New York from where you are –Iceland–to see the child or b) fly 3000 miles past New York to Los Angeles, to talk to your lawyers and your Scientology pals? Tom Cruise chose b)  yesterday even though he’s not actually divorced, has full parental rights, and many places to stay in New York. It’s not like he needs a friend’s couch to sleep on. Cruise owns an 8,000 square foot home here on West 12th St. He also is a regular customer at the Hotel Carlyle.

Cruise,too,  just stayed at the Greenwich Hotel in Tribeca when he was promoting “Rock of Ages.” There’s also a big Scientology center in the theater district. Plus, he not only needs lawyers in New York, but his own lawyers could have met him here. So what gives? Cruise hasn’t even seen Suri in almost three weeks (unless they Skype or do Face Time on iPhones).

But the press are lemmings. They pick up one story with no sources–usually from TMZ–and run with it. So today’s headlines are ‘Cruise flies home to LA alone on his 50th birthday.’ They’re also more worried about Katie Holmes being ‘stalked’ by mysterious, unknown spies– on Seventh Avenue, in building with a large supermarket, next to a big school, with two or three news vans parked outside and many other press people sitting on the sidewalk at the entrance–than ask any questions of their own.

It’s very depressing. So far neither Tom nor Katie has said a word, Holmes’s parents haven’t spoken, and not a single person is on the record about anything. But tons of “stories” have been launched. Not a single shred of fact has been included in any of them, including whether or not Katie will get any money from Tom in the divorce. (Harvey Levin of TMZ, who Alec Baldwin has fantasies of gutting like a fish, changes position on these things like a weathervane, or a puppet with unseen strings. Hilarious.)