Tom Cruise

It should tell you something that MTV is still highly valued by Hollywood as the televised center of the coolness universe. Why else would a top movie star like Tom Cruise dress up ridiculously as a fat, bald, bearded guy and embarrass himself in a profanity-littered skit on the MTV Movie Awards?

Cruise opened the show by saying he was going to take the program, put it up his posterior, and make it a diamond. He welcomed viewers to “Relax, and enjoy my two-hour giant s---.” And so it began, an apt description for the two hours that followed.

What is it about celebrities that they have to – absolutely must – be obscene in front of audiences with millions of impressionable children watching?

Broadcast networks have had repeated trouble at awards shows with celebrities cursing. But on cable television, which fears no fines or discipline from the Federal Communications Commission, MTV doesn't see profanity as a shocking accident. On this show, it was an intentional profanity barrage. If you love infantile cursing as dearly as MTV does, it was a stimulating profanity bath.

As I walked into the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal Studios Sunday evening, I had no idea the level of vulgarity I was in store for.

Attending my first MTV Movie Awards, I was immediately stunned by the number of F-words in the opening video clip of Tom Cruise recreating his movie executive roll in the film "Tropic Thunder."

Little did I know that the evening would be filled with F-bombs from a number of Hollywoodans, so much so that the man that accepted the award for best movie at the end of the festivities (Peter Facinelli of the "Twilight" series) commented, "I just want to say I've never heard the word 'f--k' used so many times in one evening."

At that moment, I thought Facinelli was going to comment about just how absurd all the vulgarity was. Instead, he went on an F-bomb-laden speech of his own (video available here, others follow, extreme vulgarity warning):

As media members continue to accuse the Tea Party of being racist due to the supposed lack of minority members, there is a conspicuous absence of diversity in blockbuster movies coming out of Hollywood this summer.

"With the notable exception of 'Karate Kid,' headlined by Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan, most of the big-budget films hitting over the next few months star Caucasian actors," wrote Brent Lang of TheWrap Wednesday.

The article surprisingly continued (h/t Big Hollywood):

Short of going full Ninja hero and snatching the shoes in mid-air, it's hard to see how Pres. Bush could have been any cooler in his handling of the Hush Puppy Hurler. I figure W's feeling pretty good about things this morning.  But that didn't stop ABC and NBC from declaring the incident "embarrassing" for President Bush.  

For good measure, on Today, Doris Kearns Goodwin discounted Bush's blithe reaction, saying he wouldn't have been that cool a couple years ago, strangely intepreting his nonchalance as evidence of how anxious he is to leave office.  And not to leave CBS out of the mix, on the Early Show Richard Roth described the president as being "nonplussed" in reaction to the incident, when he was in fact just the opposite.

You would think this the perfect formula for a blockbuster movie: megastars Tom Cruise, Robert Redford, and Meryl Streep teaming up to flood theaters with an antiwar film just in time for the holidays.

Well, think again, for it appears that this much-anticipated film, featuring the much-anticipated return of Tom Cruise to the big screen, is a bigger bomb than anything the enemy has been able to lob at us in Iraq since the surge began.

As deliciously reported by Reuters Friday evening (h/t NBer botg, emphasis added):

Al Gore. Michael Moore. Robert Redford. On Wednesday, the actor/director became the third prominent left-winger to appear on "Good Morning America" this year and berate journalists for not being liberal enough. Redford, in his second GMA interview this week, Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep stopped by to promote "Lions For Lambs," their new anti-war drama. During the interview, co-host Diane Sawyer played a minute-long clip of the movie in which Cruise's character berates a journalist for being a "windsock" to the Bush administration during the Iraq War. The clip featured Cruise haughtily complaining, "Your network led every report about the invasion of Iraq with the digital screen-sized flag to the square-jawed saluting Marine and the bald eagle soaring to Aaron Copland."

Sawyer then sycophantically begged, "Speaking as your resident windsock, what would you have us do? What would this film have us do?" Being a tough journalist, Sawyer then allowed Redford to get away with responding that when "we found out the cause behind the war was a lie, that's when I think everybody should have stood up, wakened up, and moved forward." At no point did the GMA host point out that, in regards to Iraq, Bill Clinton said the same thing about WMDs as President Bush.