Jolie, Ultimate Victim

Ron Rosenbaum on Tom Junod in Slate:

...And here it is--he begins with the question: "Does 9/11 still have meaning for most Americans? Does it have more meaning than celebrity? Does it have more meaning than the very specific message of meaninglessness contained in the weekly parable of Angelina Jolie's twisted double life? Or have we reached the point where its meaning is somehow inextricable from the meaning of celebrity, as 9/11 recedes into the past and celebrity gives birth to the future?"

I'm not making this up. I'm copying it right out of the pages of a well-known magazine, which (full disclosure) I've written for in the past. But I will be deeply indebted to any Slate reader who can make the slightest bit of sense of this paragraph about meaninglessness. Is it an example of what they used to call at Yale "the fallacy of imitative form," in which in order to write about meaninglessness you have to be meaningless?...

I can think of some other current celeb piffle that might beat this, but Rosenbaum wins extra points for linking to Brendan O'Neil in Spiked:

Over the past six weeks a Western security force has effectively taken over the small African nation of Namibia. A beach resort in Langstrand in Western Namibia has been sealed off with security cordons, and armed security personnel have been keeping both local residents and visiting foreigners at bay. A no-fly zone has been enforced over part of the country. The Westerners have also demanded that the Namibian government severely restrict the movement of journalists into and out of Namibia. The government agreed and, in a move described by one human rights organisation as 'heavy-handed and brutal', banned certain reporters from crossing its borders.

However, this Western security force is not a US or European army plundering Namibia's natural resources or threatening to topple its government. It is the security entourage of one Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the celebrity couple better known for living it up in LA than slumming it in Namibia. They reportedly wanted their first child to be born in Namibia because the country is 'the cradle of human kind' and it would be a 'special' experience (1). And it seems that no security measure is too stringent in the name of making Ms Jolie feel special. Welcome to the new celebrity colonialism....