Today on Today: Tom Cruise Takes On Matt Lauer's Thetans
With Katie Holmes supportively sitting nearby, today's Today show forced poor Matt Lauer to sit down for a taped interview with Tom Cruise, more of which will air on Monday. But we can't imagine Monday will get much better than today's segment; as Lauer put it, things "got a little tense" when Tom was asked about his anti-psychiatric views:
Tom: [with patented ferocity] Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know now that Ritalin is a street drug? [Ed: Oh, har har. We're on Ritalin right now.]
Matt: I understand the abuse of all these things —
T: [interrupting] Yeah but you don't understand the history of these drugs. And if you do, you know that it masks the problem. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance!
M: But —
T: No, Matt, I know these things —
M: No —
T: Listen —
[This continues for a few moments and we stop listening.]
M: So, depression — is it all gobbledy gook?
T: No, Matt, I'm not saying that. That's an alteration of what I'm saying. These drugs are dangerous, mind-altering chemicals. There are ways of handling these problems so that we don't end up in a Brave New World.
M: You want [other people] to do well, but you want them to do well on a road that you approve of.
T: No —
M: [interrupting] But if anti-depressants worked for Brooke Shields, isn't that okay?
T: I disagree with it.
M: But aren't there examples where it works?
T: You don't even know what Ritalin is! If you read the papers on how they came up with the drug, the dosage... You should be more responsible in knowing what it is. I am responsible. I know these things.
M: You're saying that you know how it affected people you don't know, but I do? You're now telling me that what has and hasn't worked for people I know, and I'm telling you I lived with these people and I saw an improvement.
T: So you're advocating?
M: No, I'm not. I'm just saying that in their individual cases, it helped them... We could go in circles on this matter. But do you want more people to understand Scientology? Is that a goal of yours?
T: Of course. And I don't talk about things I don't understand.
No, Tom, we think you do.