Figures

TOM'S PALS WARP PARADE POLL

April 18, 2006 -- TOM Cruise's cronies seem to have put a lot of effort into skewing a Parade magazine poll in his favor. Parade.com recently asked online readers whether they thought Cruise was responsible for his disastrous public relations year or if it was the media's fault. A shocking 84 percent of respondents blamed the press.

But Parade publicist Alexis Collado tells us: "We at Parade found this a little bit fishy, so we did some investigating. We found out more than 14,000 (of the 18,000-plus votes) that came in were cast from only 10 computers! One computer was responsible for nearly 8,400 votes alone, all blaming the media for Tom's troubles.

We also discovered that at least two other machines were the sources of inordinate numbers of votes. It seems these folks (whoever they may be) resorted to extraordinary measures to try to portray Tom in a positive light for the Parade.com survey.

There is even a chance they wrote a special 'bot' program for the sole purpose of skewing the results, rather than casting the votes by hand on a computer." Cruise spokesman Paul Bloch told us, "I know nothing about the poll, so we have nothing to comment on."