Faking It
Tina Brown thinks we're just not falling for it anymore. Lied to by the President and his buddies, lied to by a Congress that claims to care about "life" and the "traditions of the Senate", lied to by the military, lied to by celebrities ("I didn't touch that boy", "You will love my new movie", "I'm rehabilitated!"), and now, worst of all, lied to by--*gasp*--Tom Cruise.

Maybe there's been some alarming secret studio poll that proves scientifically (or Scientologically?) that Cruise's weirdness/asexuality rating is at an all-time high. But with a new movie to promote (the impending Steven Spielberg monster "War of the Worlds"), a People magazine poll showing 62 percent of readers dismissing the Tom/Katie liaison as a publicity stunt, and showy PDA ploys falling flat, Cruise resorted to desperate measures:
[SNIP]
"Sure They're in Love -- With Publicity" ran the Boston Globe headline. What Cruise doesn't seem to get is that everybody's an insider now, from the Us Magazine generation on up to the AARP cohort. Tom is just not hip to the public's new hipness. We know the poor guy has to go on "Oprah" and pretend to be in love with Holmes, and we don't mind -- he has a movie coming out. But can't he, like, fake it with more conviction?

I think she's right. We're on to them. We know Paris Hilton isn't really that stupid; that Flavor Flav isn't really in love with Brigitte Nielsen; that Madonna isn't really Jewish now; that Bill Frist didn't really learn to love Jesus in Washington; that George W. isn't really like one of us.

TV cameras are the new truth serum. The harder they try, the clearer we see right through them. Famous people need a new schtick. We're so done with them. Lying about love is the last straw.