Hey it's late (at least where I am), so I thought I would discuss the big news of the day that I heard from people. No not anything political or important, it was Tom Cruise acting "a little off" in an interview on "The Today Show" with Matt Lauer. Most people I talked to were amazed at his views on Psychiatry, but we have politicians in the White House & a significant portion of the population (Conservatives) that won't accept science or reality either.
Last month, Cruise scolded Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants for postpartum depression...
"Here is a woman, and I care about Brooke Shields because I think she is an incredibly talented woman, you look at (and think) where has her career gone," said the Minority Report actor.
"These drugs are dangerous. I have actually helped people come off. When you talk about postpartum... there is a hormonal thing that is going on, scientifically. But when you talk about emotional, chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that. You can use vitamins to help a woman through those things."
This morning Cruise was on
Today to promote
War Of The Worlds. Matt Lauer
interviewed him about the movie, his relationship & impending marriage to Katie Holmes, and finally his faith in Scientology & their beliefs about psychiatry. It leads to one of the weirdest interviews in recent memory. Here's a piece of it...
Lauer: Aren't there examples, and might not Brooke Shields be an example, of someone who benefited from one of those drugs?
Cruise: All it does is mask the problem, Matt. And if you understand the history of it, it masks the problem. That's what it does. That's all it does. You're not getting to the reason why. There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance.
Lauer: So, postpartum depression to you is kind of a little psychological gobbledygook --
Cruise: No. I did not say that.
Lauer: I'm just asking what you, what would you call it?
Cruise: No. No. Abso-- Matt, now you're talking about two different things.
Lauer: But that's what she went on the antidepressant for.
Cruise: But what happens, the antidepressant, all it does is mask the problem. There's ways, [with] vitamins and through exercise and various things... I'm not saying that that isn't real. That's not what I'm saying. That's an alteration of what I'm saying. I'm saying that drugs aren't the answer, these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind-altering, antipsychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world. The thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation, okay. And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt.
Now let me preface this by saying that I don't care what you believe, because everybody has the right to believe everything. You can worship a rock for all I care. However, in this fight I'll take 200 years of verifiable science over
L. Ron Hubbard & the galactic overlord
Xenu.
Does Cruise have a point about abuse? Absolutlely. Medicine has never been a panacea to Humanity's ills. All you have to do is watch
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest to see that. There are probably too many kids that's parents would rather drug them with Ritalin than actually be a parent. Are there people who would rather pop a pill, than deal with having a bad day? Yeah. But does that mean Psychiatry is a fraud? No. It does make you wonder whether
Sigmund Freud is the devil in Scientology though?
Cruise goes on to call Lauer "glib" in the interview...
Lauer: I'm only asking, isn't there a possibility that -- do you examine the possibility that these things do work for some people? That yes, there are abuses. And yes, maybe they've gone too far in certain areas. Maybe there are too many kids on Ritalin. Maybe electric shock --
Cruise: Too many kids on Ritalin? Matt.
Lauer: I'm just saying. But aren't there examples where it works?
Cruise: Matt. Matt, Matt, you don't even -- you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay? That's what I've done. Then you go and you say where's the medical test? Where's the blood test that says how much Ritalin you're supposed to get?
Lauer: It's very impressive to listen to you. Because clearly, you've done the homework. And you know the subject.
Cruise: And you should. And you should do that also. Because just knowing people who are on Ritalin isn't enough. You should be a little bit more responsible in knowing really --
Lauer: I'm not prescribing Ritalin, Tom. And I'm not asking anyone else to do it. I'm simply saying, I know some people who seem to have been helped by it...
Now, how does this connect to politics? Cruise sounds crazy in this interview when he contradicts science & I've heard the news media & pundits call him on it all day. But what if he instead said that
Global Warming didn't exist? What if they wanted to teach kids in a science class that the Earth was only 4,000 years old, because the Bible told them so? Or how about saying that the terrorists in Iraq are in their
"last throes"? Cruise isn't the only crazy man...
Update [2005-6-25 3:7:4 by Rimjob]:
You can watch video of the interview between Tom Cruise & Matt Lauer here.