Um, who was jumping on the sofa?

One of today's news items focuses the bright light once again on one of my fave topics, Tom and Katie. In today's USA Today, it's mentioned in an article that Tom has chosen to demote his sister from all-knowing publicist, to watcher of charitable events, and has hired a new publicity agency. Tom, you see, has fallen from 11th to 193rd in some celebrity popularity poll recently released. This steep decline has only happened since spring this year. Here's the link to the article: http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-11-08-cruise-publicist_x.htm.
Anyway, here's my thing: why is it the publicist who gets fired from her job because her client is flipping out all over television, in front of paparazzi, and all that? I mean, however unlikely, if she told him that this would be a strong and smart marketing campaign, then certainly, she should be pink-slipped. But I get the feeling that this is more of a Cruise-ian damage control mission, where the publicisit is the most visible person he can fire for all this bad press and ink he's been getting. He definitely won't be firing himself, Katie or Scientology.
Ex-publicist? I say, "scapegoat." Tom should be getting his own head together, rather then making others roll.