At some point I stopped liking Tom Cruise. I remember watching “Risky Business”, “Top Gun”, “Days of Thunder”, even “Jerry McGuire”, and thinking, “I like the way this guy works.” He is a decent actor and I like the characters he portrays. Then he went and got all “real” on us. He jumped up and down on the sofa during the Oprah show. He started slamming people for their views and opinions on how to get better stating his spiritual views as better path. How dare he? Just what gives him the right?
Over the weekend I watched “Valkyrie”. I love military movies and especially the ones that portray periods of history with some semblance of accuracy. Despite the fact I haven’t watched a Tom Cruise movie in quite some time, I put that aside as I wanted to see how the director and actors treated the material. It was on broadcast TV so I had time to think about the movie and why I was angry with Tom Cruise.
It was somewhere at the 40 minute mark during a commercial for God only knows what I had a huge and horrific revelation. Tom Cruise did what we all demand from people who use social media myself included. He became transparent, honest, and real! He was no longer a Twitter ID, a Facebook friend, a connection on LinkedIn, he introduced us to him in the “offline
world.
Many people just couldn’t handle the truth. (Note the “Few Good Men” reference.) In the best effort to become more real I thought that I owed Tom Cruise an apology, despite the fact he probably lost no sleep over my consternation with his position. I am willing to admit when I and wrong and this would be the time. Mr. Cruise please accept my public apology and know that my wife did make me take her to see “Knight and Day” in the theater and were not disappointed.
And let this be a lesson to us all. Our readers, customers, followers, and friends would prefer we be real and genuine and honest. If it troubles them, perhaps they really aren’t interested in being friends, just part of the crowd.
