Hollywood heights

Bet you didn't know that the White House was filled with googly-eyed Hollywood fanboys.

The Libby trial is stirring up a lot of weirdness. Nikki Finke is on the latest testimony that the names, Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz, came up during questioning and the broader context of how and why this happened. Once again, the attention and minding the administration was paying attention to the Iraq war is more than obvious here, because, you know, they're "serious" people.

A CIA official who appeared as a witness recalled a June 14th, 2003, intelligence briefing with Libby where the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney bragged about just having had a sitdown with Tom and Penelope. Libby told the briefer how excited he was that he had just met the actors, according to the briefing notations. The subject of the tête-à-tête was Cruise's concern about Germany's treatment of Scientology. Here's what I find so utterly nauseating about this news: that the meeting coincided with a first wave of media stories about how morale was plummeting among U.S. soldiers three months after crossing into Iraq because there seemed to be no American postwar plan to control the chaos. I'm also infuriated by the obvious hypocrisy: after all, no White House has publicly hated Hollywood more than the Bush administration, yet here was one of its highest ranking officials privately star-struck by movie celebs. Nor can I forget that this meeting followed by just a few months the GOP's mid-term election strategy of taunting the Democrats for being "too Hollywood." (See my LA Weekly column, The Bully Pulpit, from that time.) Finally, let's all remember that one of Libby's defenses is that he was too busy dealing with national security issues to pay attention to Valerie Plame Wilson. Yet he made time for Cruise and Cruz.

I'm guessing that Libby came away from the meeting with the distinct understanding that impossible missions could actually be done and done well, with manly bravura and little concern for collateral damage. Hell, why didn't Libby advise sending Cruise into Iraq all by himself? I'm sure he could have handled it all quite comfortably and Iraq would be a model democracy right now.

The essentials of Libby's defense are that he was a busy, busy man, helping win the war on terror, dontcha know. He didn't have time to remember all the details of who was outing whom. Who can keep tracking of it all? Oh, can I show you my autographed picture of Tom? Yeah, he's awesome ....

It seems clear from this that Libby should just plead guilty and serve his time. Because if more stupid shit like this comes out, he's doomed.