Hate is a strong word, so let’s not employ it here. Let’s say I strongly dislike this celebrity couple, despite all their humanitarian activities, and my interest was piqued to see this news story criticising their oh-so-laudable choice to give birth in Namibia:
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have been labelled “colonial overlords” for the treatment they received in Namibia in the weeks leading up to the birth of their daughter last month.
Namibia’s National Society For Human Rights accuses the superstar couple of “using heavy-handed and brutal tactics” to get the African country’s government to aid their desire for total privacy.
A NSHR spokesman says, “To shut down a national border so she can give birth in peace is a massive abuse of power.”
You think? Jolie and Pitt closed down a national border so they could avoid paparazzi. This is, as the human rights org says, presumably one that Jolie has worked with during her multiple trips to the country, a massive abuse of power, in part because their refusal of her entry and stay could have hedged on their continuing to receive massive amounts of money from outside donors.
Incidentally, Namibia has a high infant mortality rate and the UNDP’s 2005 Human Development Report indicated that 34.9% of the population live on $1 per day and 55.8% live on $2 per day. So kind of the Jolie-Pitt family to arrange government time and money to give birth to a baby that could have had equally private care and treatment in a country that isn’t so strapped for resources.
The new parents, along with kids Maddox, 4, and Zahara, 1, have been staying at the luxury resort in Namibia since April, where their personal security team and Namibian police have shielded them from paparazzi.
Last week, the Namibian government said foreign journalists wishing to cover the birth must have written permission from Pitt and Jolie to enter the country and obtain a work permit.
And so kind of them to use their brand-new daughter as a donation-seeking, money-making device. That just screams mindful parenthood.
Now don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate that someone so goth as to wear her ex-husband’s blood in a vial around her neck can wake up and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around her personal drama and teen angst. Jolie has done a lot of work and spent a lot of time giving money and raising awareness for human rights travesties around the world. I only wish that more celebrities would follow her example. Except for abusing her power in the third world by shutting down relatively powerless countries for her convenience of giving birth.
H/T: Avast, Feminist Conspiracy!
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And to stave off any indignant commenters who are pissed that I can criticize the beautiful people, I’ll beat you to the punch:
OMIGOD I LUV HER SO MUCH <3<3<3<3<3 UR JUST JELOUS SHE IS SO HOTT WTFl33tBBQ!!!!!!1111!!ELEVEN!!
And just for extra measure, a friend of a friend wrote me when she heard I was irritated about this story with a story of her own:
If it makes you feel any better my nephew worked on the set of oceans 12 and he said brad pitt is a HUGE DICK. like everyone else on the set was having fun, hanging out and pitt ran to his trailer between shots and didn’t socialize because he was too busy fucking jolie, since that was the only time he could work it in since he was hiding the affair from his wife. he made them all complicit in it.
Interesting considering our favorite bee-stung lipped actress and her sherpa boyfriend deny an affair ever occurred. But hey, who am I to question a modern activist imperialist?
You may kindly shut the fuck up about your exceeding ignorance. Depression is a disease. It has fuck-all to do with how much money you have, how beautiful you are, how much power you have, and how many people love you (other than the fact that, like every other disease, more money means less likely to die from it).
And we don’t know details about her personal life, except from supermarket tabloids, and even those are none of anyone’s business.
You’re absolutely right and I will stand corrected about depression being a disease. Not afraid to say that anyone can suffer from it. However, if your’e suffering from depression and you’ve obviously got some issues going on, WHY on earth would you invite more children into that senario??? Why would someone who has such tumultuous relationships with the people that are closest to her think she has any room to be an ambassador to teach the world how to be?
And someone who says “You may kindly shut the fuck up” doesn’t really sound like the picture of intelligence to me but whatever.
Sara-
You sound like a child, so I’ll be slightly gentle with you.
Depression is a disease. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love your family. It doesn’t mean that you can’t be good at your job. It doesn’t mean that you cannot be passionate about the state of the world.
This post was originally about the supreme arrogance of this woman AND her husband. But, even it mentioned the amount of good work she has done for human rights, and, by all accounts, she make sure her children want for nothing.
Some how this grew to be the monster zombie post it is, bringing in Jennifer Anniston, how ugly this woman is (which, she isn’t by most metrics, and it’s irrelevant if she is) how terrible of an actress she is (which, again, isn’t true. She’s so far demonstrated limited range but not bad acting) and that because she has depression she shouldn’t have a family.
I wish I had pursued a degree in sociology, and read monster threads like this, and then come to a conclusion as to what this says about society.