Uh-oh. Someone's been glib.
And sadly for Dr. Drew Pinsky, the price of such an affront has risen in the past three years from simple YouTube parody to complete public evisceration.
Tom Cruise's ever-vigilant lawyer has lashed out at comments made by the Loveline and Celebrity Rehab doc in which he not so subtly speculated that people drawn to so-called cult religions (and specifically, Cruise to Scientology) likely do so as a result of childhood trauma, neglect and mental illness.
Attorney Bert Fields wasted no time in rallying back with a stunner of a theory of his own: namely, that such diagnoses have not been heard since the height of Nazi Germany.
Cruise's latest war of the words was launched after Playboy released snippets of its interview with the good doctor, which is featured in next month's issue.
"A lot of people in the public eye who behave strangely have mental illness we can learn from, and much of it is based on childhood trauma, without a doubt," Pinsky told the magazine.
"Take a guy like Tom Cruise. Why would somebody be drawn into a cultish kind of environment like Scientology? To me, that's a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood—maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect."
Needless to say, Pinsky's hypothesis didn't sit well with Cruise's camp.
"This unqualified television performer who is obviously just looking for notoriety is so grotesquely unprofessional as to pretend to diagnose Tom and others without ever meeting them," Fields told the New York Post's Page Six. (Professional or not, Pinsky is hardly unqualified, having received his M.D. from the University of Southern California, where he teaches, is a board-certified addiction medicine specialist and has served as the chief resident at the Huntington Hospital in Pasadena.)
"He seems to be spewing the absurdity that all Scientologists are mentally ill," Fields continued. "The last time we heard garbage like this was from Joseph Goebbels."
Sounds like someone could do with a little thetan cleansing.
Pinsky, meanwhile, didn't take long to realize the error of his ways, not in terms of his theory, but rather the way in which it was taken.
"[Dr. Drew] apologizes if his comments were hurtful," a rep for the medico confirmed to E! News, adding that he "meant no harm" to the actor.
"Although Mr. Field's intent is clearly to slander and discredit Dr. Drew, under no circumstances is Dr. Drew making a blanket diagnosis about Scientology nor Mr. Cruise, whom he does not know. Dr. Drew was simply using Mr. Cruise as an example of someone who is recognizable to help the public understand.
"Again, Dr. Drew meant him no harm."