After being featured on Celebrity Justice for getting legal threats from Tom Cruise, Buffalo's BEAST news/satire biweekly has bit back with a "Tom Cruise Baiting Issue." In addition to the cover (above), most unrelated pictures have been replaced with Tom Cruise's, his lawyer was named a human dildo, and there is an interesting psychoanalysis on why Tom Cruise is a dick.
"Just sue. Just do it. Sue, sue, sue. Do it. Go, go, go, go."
-Tom Cruise, revealing in Details magazine how he tells his lawyer to deal with negative press.
It’s been a fun couple of weeks here at the Beast. After a long, hard Buffalo winter spent slogging away, running on fumes with little relief and few rewards, the last few days have brought some cheer, and put some gas in our tank. Smiles abound in the usually glum office today, and our regular cashflow difficulties seem somehow less burdensome, almost funny.
Why, you ask? Because we have seriously angered Tom Cruise. He’s threatening to sue. Plus we were on Court TV last weekend.
Now, you might wonder why we’re not shaking in our shelltoes, panicked and apologetic the way almost any other publication would be if the famously litigious Cruise fired a shot across their bow. Well, maybe we’re just not aware of what we’re really in for; that’s a genuine possibility. Part of it is the simple fact that Cruise couldn’t possibly hope to collect any damages from us, because we just don’t have any money. Certainly it has already been a publicity coup for us, garnering national exposure of a sort we couldn’t have hoped for, and promises to deliver much more if the obsessively defensive Cruise follows through on his threats. But frankly, we just think it’s damn hilarious that an Oscar-winning, blockbuster-crapping star like Cruise would find the time or energy to do battle with a struggling independent satire paper in Buffalo. All week, we’ve been spontaneously bursting into laughter just looking at each other.
You probably don’t know what we’re talking about, unless you’ve caught any of the press on it, which was admittedly meager relative to the grand cacophony of pop media. So here’s the story so far.
* * * * *
Background: High Loathsome Sound
Jan 10th: Ignoring advice from Beast founder Matt Taibbi to start the putatively annual "50 Most Loathsome People in America" list three days earlier than he thinks necessary, lethargic editor Al Uthman starts the 5,000-plus word list a day before deadline.
Jan 11th: Uthman "finishes" the hastily prepared list and immediately deems it an abject failure, but puts it in the paper anyway, because impatient printers are waiting. Tom Cruise’s entry at number thirty-nine is one of the last and most quickly dashed off items. Here it is in its entirety:
39. Tom Cruise
Crimes: Inexplicable stardom. In a just world, Brendan Fraser would get an Oscar before this carbon copy of every other rich asshole cokehead with a fast car. Consistently influential in casting women in his movies for the sole purpose of nailing them. Extremely convincing when he plays an ambitious, superficial prick.
Smoking Gun: Always plays an ambitious, superficial prick.
Punishment: Caught in the act with Vin Diesel.
It’s not very good, really. There could have been much better digs at Cruise about his increasingly vocal support of the Church of Scientology, or his "respect the cock" character in Magnolia, for instance. At any rate, there it is. Certainly the list contains much worse characterizations of many of the other 49 listed (well, 48 actually—Uthman sloppily skipped number 33), but no one else seems to have noticed, or maybe their lives are simply too busy and rewarding for them to give a shit what some tiny rust belt paper thinks of them.
Jan 14th—mid-February: Once posted on the web, the Loathsome List takes on a life of its own, passed around thousands of blogs, webforums and listservs, generating hundreds of thousands of hits and thousands of e-mails from around the world. People love the damn thing. A Google search for "50 most loathsome people in America" currently brings up about 78,200 webpages. Requests for subscriptions grow to a steady trickle.
Feb 3rd: The Loathsome List is the topic of discussion for over fifteen minutes on Air America Radio’s "Unfiltered." Unfortunately, it is the most vapid, superficial treatment imaginable, clearly revealing that the hosts, including "comedienne" Lizz Winstead (whose Comedy Central standup feature is the worst we’ve ever seen, and we’ve seen Jeff Foxworthy), haven’t even skimmed the article. Worse yet, regular co-host and legendary rapper Chuck D wasn’t even there. To help them discuss the article, the show brings in horrible entertainment barnacle Michael Musto of the Village Voice, who would have made an excellent #33. No one in the studio seems to be aware that initial Beast editor Matt Taibbi works at the New York Press, the Voice’s main competition in New York City’s free paper market. In fact, no one seems to be aware that the Beast is a newspaper and not just a website. Despite the ostensibly political nature of Air America, the "Unfiltered" crew chooses to focus almost solely on worthless celebrities like Michael Jackson and Anna Nicole Smith. Then our website goes down for a whole day, negating any possible positive effect of the program.
* * * * *
The Worm’s Turn
Feb 5th: It begins. Dickhead L.A. lawyer-to-the-stars Bertram Fields pads his billable hours mailing an unintentionally hilarious letter on behalf of Tom Cruise, naming just about everyone on our masthead as respondents, demanding an apology and making the ridiculous assertion that his entry in the Loathsome list "can cause serious personal and professional damage to Mr. Cruise."
Feb 23rd: The Beast responds by printing Fields’ letter along with a less-than-serious response in an attempt to goad Cruise into actually suing. The letter, originally published in Beast issue 69:
LAW OFFICES OF GREENBERG GLUSKER FIELDS CLAMAN MACHTINGER & KINSELLA LLP
BERTRAM FIELDS
February 2, 2005
The Beast
Gentlemen:
I represent Tom Cruise. Your Issue #67 of "The Beast" contains false, defamatory and malicious assertions about Mr. Cruise. They include the following:
(1) That Mr. Cruise is a "cokehead." This is utterly false. He is not and never has been a "cokehead" or even a cocaine user. In fact, his fiercely anti-drug views are well known.
(2) That Mr. Cruise consistently casts women "for the purpose of nailing them." This too is completely false. Mr. Cruise has never cast any actress for that purpose. He is dedicated and professional in his work. He casts actresses based on their acting ability and fitness for the role, nothing else.
To publicly issue such absurdly false statements, without the slightest basis in fact, manifests an extraordinary level of malice and the complete absence of any sense of journalistic ethics.
You have made other false assertions about Mr. Cruise, such as your juvenile ranting that he is an "asshole" and is "loathsome." But, even though these assertions are irresponsible and far from the truth, they may conceivably be your opinions. If so, your reckless expression of such opinions formed without the slightest knowledge on the subject is reprehensible, even if not actionable.
The false assertions numbered above, however, are not matters of opinion. They are flat out, demonstrable lies. They can cause serious personal and professional damage to Mr. Cruise.
Without limiting Mr. Cruise’s rights or remedies in any way, I must ask that you issue an immediate retraction of your false assertions about him in language which I approve on his behalf.
BERTRAM FIELDS
cc: Charles Shephard, Esq. E. Barry Haldeman, Esq.
[...]
Enjoy! More fun at http://www.buffalobeast.com