Angelina Jolie, the world's most elegant....surge protector (1 Viewer)

SaintJ

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022702217_pf.html

Interesting viewpoint, seemed worth sharing.

"Hollywood types" are usually derided by the right, saying actors should keep their noses out of things like politics (unless their names are Reagan or Schwarzennegger). This one is an interesting twist all around.

Between her and Pitt, they both seem pretty well-grounded in reality.

And to remember, Jolie's last big movie project was the Daniel Pearl story, WSJ had to swallow real hard and give her praise for that one.
 
Somehow she and Pitt have managed to not only be great at their profession but at the same time have achieved the abilty to not let it cloud their abilty to stay grounded and reach out and help those in need.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022702217_pf.html

Interesting viewpoint, seemed worth sharing.

"Hollywood types" are usually derided by the right, saying actors should keep their noses out of things like politics (unless their names are Reagan or Schwarzennegger). This one is an interesting twist all around.

Between her and Pitt, they both seem pretty well-grounded in reality.

And to remember, Jolie's last big movie project was the Daniel Pearl story, WSJ had to swallow real hard and give her praise for that one.

It's funny. "Hollywood types" are usually pimped out by the left, used in fund raising, endorsements, and for speech events. This one is an interesting twist all around. I wonder how the left will handle it :hihi:


But seriously, it's an excellent read and increases my respect for Jolie. Their work in New Orleans however had already garnered them an incredibly high position in my esteem (for what that's worth, which is nothing).
 
Good read and good insight from someone looking at Iraq not through partisan but through the humanitarian lens.
 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022702217_pf.html

Interesting viewpoint, seemed worth sharing.

"Hollywood types" are usually derided by the right, saying actors should keep their noses out of things like politics (unless their names are Reagan or Schwarzennegger). This one is an interesting twist all around.

Between her and Pitt, they both seem pretty well-grounded in reality.

And to remember, Jolie's last big movie project was the Daniel Pearl story, WSJ had to swallow real hard and give her praise for that one.

Where I have more respect for Pitt/Jolie and Reagan and Schwarzenegger is that their actions follow their beliefs. It is well documented what Pitt & Jolie are doing/have done in New Orleans and in Iraq. Reagan and Schwarzenegger at least had the guts to run for office based on their political ideas.

The ones I don't have respect for are those who want to stand on stage or at an award show and deliver a monologue (or really it's just a diatribe) rather than either take action, or at least have a two-way conversation with people. They don't appear to be interested in that. They just want to beat others over the head with the fact that they think their thoughts are more important because they are famous. :angryrazz:

Kudos to Brad and Angelina. They definitely don't mind getting their hands dirty. And while they get lots of publicity for their work, they don't seem to be doing it for the publicity.
 
Hey, they all show up on Maher.

What Jolie is doing, however, is reminding everybody that we maybe should stay, not for political reasons, but for purposes of helping in a humanitarian crisis that we precipitated ourselves. We took a country with an oppressed people suffering under one dictator and made a giant holy hash of an entire region.

And then we wonder why everybody doesn't jump on the bandwagon when we propose military solutions.

You break it, you buy it.
 
Hey, they all show up on Maher.

What Jolie is doing, however, is reminding everybody that we maybe should stay, not for political reasons, but for purposes of helping in a humanitarian crisis that we precipitated ourselves. We took a country with an oppressed people suffering under one dictator and made a giant holy hash of an entire region.

And then we wonder why everybody doesn't jump on the bandwagon when we propose military solutions.

You break it, you buy it.

And, much though I hate the fact, the Geneva Convention requires a conquering nation to rebuild the country that it conquered. The extent of that is debatable, but it is our obligation. So, I agree in principal, I'm just not sure that it is possible to do much more than we already have done in the practical sense.

By the way, for further support to the point that Pitt and Jolie don't quite fit the left-wing, liberal, tree hugging, "Hollywood Types" mold, I read a recent article stating that Jolie is working to produce a movie version of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" with her starring as Dagny Taggert and Pitt wants to produce a movie version of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" with Pitt playing the main character Rourke. Apparently both are big Rand fans. Now, as I am painfully aware, being a big Ayn Rand fan puts you on the political fringe, but it certainly puts them far from the normal "Hollywood Types."
 
Now, as I am painfully aware, being a big Ayn Rand fan puts you on the political fringe

Having struggled through both books, the literary as well, I can assure you.
 
Acutely slanted polemics, nothing more. Her binary approach to everything made it easily digestible for the fanatics, but the lack of any recognition that 99.5% of the world inhabits the middle ground made for enough disconnect that she ended up more as a cult figure than one of the 20th century's great philosophers.

But that's a topic for another thread. Threads about uber-babes like Jolie (even my wife said she'd sleep with her, and my wife doesn't like tattoos) shouldn't be cluttered up with references to a woman so unattractive she had enough free time on her hands to write Atlas Shrugged.
 
Acutely slanted polemics, nothing more. Her binary approach to everything made it easily digestible for the fanatics, but the lack of any recognition that 99.5% of the world inhabits the middle ground made for enough disconnect that she ended up more as a cult figure than one of the 20th century's great philosophers.

No doubt the books are written very black and white, but it's done for a point and given her childhood in Soviet Russia, the view that things are that black and white is not surprising. Beyond that, it was fiction and romantic fiction at that. But, that should not take away from the underlying philosophical system. The proof of her value system was given in a fairly step by step dialectic in the books, although I agree that many have probably seized upon her because of the overall story rather than a serious examination of the underlying philosophy.

Anyway, it is beyond the scope of this thread. To get back on topic, I've always been a big Jolie fan and knowing that she also has a brain and likes Ayn Rand only make me find her more attractive and I didn't think that was even possible.
 
But that's a topic for another thread. Threads about uber-babes like Jolie (even my wife said she'd sleep with her, and my wife doesn't like tattoos) shouldn't be cluttered up with references to a woman so unattractive she had enough free time on her hands to write Atlas Shrugged.

Hmm.

So whose wife here wouldn't sleep with Angelina Jolie?

Whoever raises their hand...I feel sorry for ya, man. ;)
 
To continue off-topic: I read a little bit of Rand and thought she was preaching to the choir so-to-speak. A
Her work was clearly directed to her followers rather than any serious attempt at philosophy. You have to assume that is what she wanted, to buid a cult following rather than engage is any sort of meaningful debate.
 
To continue off-topic: I read a little bit of Rand and thought she was preaching to the choir so-to-speak. A
Her work was clearly directed to her followers rather than any serious attempt at philosophy. You have to assume that is what she wanted, to buid a cult following rather than engage is any sort of meaningful debate.

Works for me.

I suspect that Jolie has often erected something else entirely.
 
To continue off-topic: I read a little bit of Rand and thought she was preaching to the choir so-to-speak. A
Her work was clearly directed to her followers rather than any serious attempt at philosophy. You have to assume that is what she wanted, to buid a cult following rather than engage is any sort of meaningful debate.


I agree to an extent, but I don't think she had th intent of building a cult. I think that based on her childhood in Soviet Russia she saw collectivism as a horrible thing and wanted people to realize that. No doubt her books take some literary license, but they are works of fiction after all.

I can also see why some who is a Quine fan (and likely Wittgenstein fan), like you are, would look down a bit on the rigorousness/seriousness of her philosophy. But, in a way, I think that was her point. She saw the modern language analysts as missing the whole point of philosophy and unable to "see the forest through he trees". She starts with a premise that many more "rigorous" philosophers will not accept, namely that "I" exist and therefore "I" am the highest value. I had a professor at UF, R.M. Hare, who once noted in a class that if a philosopher will not accept the simply proposition that we do exist, then "to hell with you."

Obviously, those two things are very hard to prove in a rigorous philosophical sense so she is likely not going to be seen as a serious philosopher by people from that general school of thought.


Of course some of my attraction to her philosophy is the fact that she essentially said many of the things that I already thought so I guess it was really likely I would agree. And, I guess that really supports your point about her preaching to the converted in the end.:hihi:
 

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