With the release of Tom Cruise’s latest movie, Cruise has been prompted to apologize for the upbraiding of Matt Lauer he did in 2005 (watch the video here) while discussing Brooke Shields’ advocating of psychiatric drugs. Cruise was widely attacked and ridiculed along with his religion, Scientology, for questioning the scientific underpinnings of psychiatry. Yet what was in some ways even more remarkable, and got far too little media play, was how The Today Show tried to make up for their “mistake” of letting Cruise talk doctor on TV by inviting American Psychiatric Association president Steven Sharfstein and psychiatrist Dr. Joseph Glenmullen on to straighten things out the following day. (Watch that video in full here.) Dr. Sharfstein sets the stage by parroting the “Cruise is just a stupid, irresponsible actor playing doctor” line, while Dr. Glenmullen very politely–but with admirable persistence–keeps pointing out that, in fact, Cruise had made a lot of very good, and very accurate points which the public should be more aware of. When Couric’s increasing bafflement about whether “chemical imbalances in the brain” are real or not finally pushes the dialogue to a climax, it is Sharfstein who buckles and concedes no one actually has any evidence to support a biochemical theory of mental illness. But Sharfstein then promptly suggests this debate about the actual scientific veracity of psychiatry’s claims is only appropriate within the halls of professional academia, and is not for the poor, lost, possibly mentally ill peons of the general public like you and I to hear about.

All of which returns us to Cruise’s apology… He needn’t have. Because the very fact that most people and most media ignored this important follow-up discussion, while continuing to lambast Cruise for his statements to this day, shows that even Cruise’s intense personal attacks on Lauer for “promoting” drugs were not misplaced. After all, the media and general public have a very, very important role to play in all this and if Tom Cruise doesn’t speak the truth, it seems relatively few ever even listen otherwise.