Why Suri Cruise matters

I just downloaded Suri Cruise's birth certificate. And I, too, wonder why she hasn't been seen. I also feel terribly invested in Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughan. I'm happy they're in love, but I don't want them to rush into marriage, just because Brangelina had a baby first so Jen wants to win the race to the altar. And I'm hoping that his dramatic turn in the upcoming Hollywoodland rejuvenates Ben Affleck's career. All of this is important to me.

No, I'm not stupid. And yes, I do have real friends, people that I actually interact with on a regular basis, that I could concentrate on.

But I often find reality lacking, so I escape into the pages of US, PEOPLE and smokinggun.com.

My mom is flirting with skin cancer. One friend told me that she enjoys following her Xanax with wine because it calms her down faster. Another friend is so overwhelmed at work that she has a hard time stringing three coherent words together. Another can't afford medical insurance so she keeps telling me how superior she feels to the rest of us, experiencing her body while the rest of us simply medicate ours. And it's Monday, so let me say it for the first time this week: I hate this job.

I do read. I know about the Korean situation. It scares me that we have Bolton at the UN. It disgusts me that we are occupying a country with no WMD's while we should have been paying attention to a country that is rather proud of its missles. I know about the soldiers charged with rape and murder in Iraq and wonder how far our actions at Gitmo and Abu Gharib went in dehumanizing these American boys. I ache for the woman here in Chicago who deserted her ADD son at Taste of Chicago because she didn't have the resources -- emotional and fiscal -- to care for him. There's so much misery everywhere we look.

So I choose every now and again to look away and focus instead on Suri and Jen and Vince and Ben. (The Star Jones thing is pretty entertaining, too.)

I do, however, about the soul-sucking nature of celebrity worship. In the summer of 2004 I saw Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg at a fundraiser for Senator Kerry. Here's a woman who has been famous her entire life, and not by choice. As she walked through the crowd, she seemed fragile and damaged. Here she was, at a reception for Kerry campaign staff. She would never find a more supportive audience anywhere. And yet as she made her way to the stage, she seemed not to hear us, as though sending her mind away to the Happy Place would protect her somehow. I worried how she would fare at the real dinner in the ballroom where she would have to mingle with big dollar contributors. I suddenly felt very maternal toward her. I wanted to put my arms around her and tell her she didn't have to do this -- we had their credit card numbers already, so even if she ran away, we still had their contributions. Once she made it to the stage, she was poised, sophisticated and very well spoken. But we weren't surrounding her when she was on stage.

It occured to me as I listened to her speak that I have seen her bid farewell to her entire immediate family. I watched her slip her hand under the flag that covered her father's coffin. I saw her kiss her hand and touch her mother's grave at Arlington. Through telescopic lenses I saw her seated on a ship, listening to the service as her brother's ashes were tossed into the sea. How weird, creepy and intrusive is that? I realize that the Kennedys are public figures, part of history, and that press attention goes with the territory. But watching that thin woman try to slip through the crowd without making eye contact, seeing the trepidation in every line of her body, I wonder what had happened to her to make her construct such a thick protective shell. Do people stop her on the street and ask about Marilyn Monroe, Chappaquidick and assassination theories? Seeing her that night makes me wonder about the personal price of celebrity as entertainment, even as I indulge in it.