Whatever Happened to the A List?

Entertainment reporters, tabloids, shock jocks and bloggers have all waited paitiently for Tom Cruise's calculated star to fall from its celestial heights, and now that it has, it is kind of anticlimatic.

Thus far reviewers have not been kind to Tom Cruise's new flic The Last Samaurai. And, as the weekend progresses, the critics are piling on. Cruise is one of the last of a dying breed, namely: A List celebrities.

Once our solar system was filled with such stars, now no longer. Once we had Madonna, Oprah, Britney Spears, Bennifer, Michael Jordan, Jack Nicholson, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and Brad Pitt.

Each one of these stars has taken a beating in the past year. Jordan is a serial adulterer, grungy Fred Durst had sex with pristine Britney Spears, Jonathan Franzen bitchslapped the inscrutable Oprah, Madonna's Marxist British film with her husband was such a flop it wasn't even released in the UK, Bennifer Flopped, Aguilera's second studio album, 2002's Stripped was a commercial flop, Brad Pitt went into haitus to do his Troy film, and even Jack Nicholson isn't quite so nimble anymore, as he settles down, away from the camera flashbulbs with his new sweetie, Diane Keaton, finally accepting his late middle age in interviews.

If you were to ask me -- today, December 6, 2003 -- who are the A List stars are, the people who make everyone stand at attention, especially the gossipers and East Coast media types, I would say, of the top of my head, Al Sharpton (the B Lister of the Democratic Party), Paris Hilton, maybe Halle Barre, Michael Jackson.

Basically, B List freaks (sorry, Halle)

So, I guess Radar Magazine's B List nation was about right.

Where are you Maer Roshan, we need your wise magazine to guide us through the upcoming celebrity freakshow.