The Chris Moeller Archives

The blessed event

The spawn of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes has entered the world this week just in time to publicize her mother's appearance in "Thank You For Smoking" at a multiplex near your home. Here's the perspective of author and blogger Walter Kern on the girl's birth:

Of all the world's great traditions of exploitation-- master over slave, husband over wife, rich man over poor man-- parenthood is the most absolute and the least subject to scrutiny or pressure. Not only do the stronger parties involved have the right to construct the weaker one's reality and then imprison their subject inside of it, they have the right to create the subject at a moment not of its choosing and not necessarily to its advantage. For Holmes and 'Cruise' to have marched a helpless new spirit into the global media s***-storm that they, their publicists, and the clerical overseers have been whipping up for many months now should not only be an actionable infraction but a grave reminder to all of us not to toy around with the unformed soul material.

Suri, lovely child, you are free. You just don't know it yet. You don't even have to, ultimately, keep that name they gave you. You can be an 'Amy' like your friends. None of what happened is your responsibility. Your mother, she chose to relinquish her personal liberty. Your father, he chose to forsake his humanness. But you, at eighteen, as an American citizen and-- in the words of Desiderata-- 'a child of the universe' will have the right to hop any bus you want and take it as far as you want and never return.

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I caught that "Thank You For Smoking" last night, and came away disappointed. As a satire, I don't think it forced me to think in a different way. The central character, a slick tobacco lobbyist played by Aaron Eckhart, failed to grab me or provoke any empathy or intrigue. It's worth a look on a cheaper movie format down the road, though. The opening title sequence is impressive, Robert Duvall's worth watching in anything, and the guy who plays Rob Lowe's secretary steals the show.

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The Great Pujols' next hit will be the 1,000th of his career. The 26-year-old slugger needed five years and a couple weeks to brush against this plateau. Baseball's career record is 4,256 hits, held by Pete Rose. Do the math, people.

posted by CM @ 12:55 PM