Tom Cruise, A3G, and the value of not showing too much

Last week, Tom Cruise announced that he was ditching Lee Anne DeVette, his sister/publicist, whose reign has coincided with TC's infamous recent bout of Brooke-Shields-dissing, Oprah's-couch-jumping, Scientology-hyping, and Katie-Holmes-brainwashing-and-impregnating. Presumably this means we can expect Tom to start to act more like a sane person, and that after a couple of months we with our teeny attention spans will have forgotten all about his looney tunes era altogether.

In another development, today Article III Groupie, the quasi-official gossip blogger of the federal judiciary, outed herself (or was outed) as David Lat, a prosecutor from New Jersey.* While I am all about the smackdown of people like these commenters, who called the information "yucky" and "disturbing," I definitely agree that knowing A3G is a fresh-faced man who puts drug users in the hoosgaw instead of the fabulous drunken Miss Hannigan-type character I'd imagined is quite a let-down.**

So what can we learn from these two seemingly unrelated events? Let me relate to you a little lesson I learned as a youth. When I was in high school (OK, middle school). I had a little phase in which I liked Skid Row and considered myself something of a rebel, and thus I used to sometimes wear somewhat scanty outfits. My wise father would address the issue by saying, "Aren't you going to be cold in that?," by which he clearly meant, "Stop dressing like a little tramp." It's too bad my dad wasn't around to gently berate Tom Cruise and A3G before they started showing their metaphorical titties all over town!

*Following the release of this information, Article III Groupie's blog, Underneath Their Robes, got all mysteriously password-protected, which seems to perhaps suggest that the outing has had some ill effect on the blog, and more importantly means my link is kind of useless. In lieu of that, here's what Wonkette had to say about it, and you can read a bunch of legally-tinged info about it on How Appealing.)

**True, when I first realized A3G was a conservative, I went through a period of mourning, but I have since gotten over it. After all, Miss Hannigan was a sadist who abused orphans, but she was still pretty awesome.