Hello World

An op-ed by Angelina Jolie. Yes! It’s just a matter of time before she gets her Nobel Peace Prize!

Anyway, whenever I read something like this, I wonder how much (if any) of the writing comes from the celebrity whose name is on the top. I know that people ghostwrite books all the time, but do they ghostwrite these bite-size polemics? Just based on the eloquence of the language and the artful structure of many of these pieces, I’m guessing yes, but it just seems wrong. Outsourcing a heartfelt plea for global justice smacks of inauthenticity–it’s one thing to hire a hack to help you make a quick buck off your hardcore fans (not a good thing, necessarily, but defensible at least) but it’s another thing to say to a staffer, “I’m against landmine use, could you put together an emotional essay about it for the Times?” Of course, this whole post is incredibly unfair; I have no idea whether Jolie actually wrote that thing, and there’s no evidence suggesting that she didn’t. But it doesn’t feel very likely to me.

At any rate, I actually think it’s great that Jolie is using her celebrity for a good cause (and “suggesting” to Brad that he might want to do the same). And she’s been doing it for a decade now, so it’s hard to chalk it up to a cynical stunt. Ultimately, even if she’s just lending her name to someone else’s writing, she’s contributing to a cause she cares about and trying to make the world a better place. That’s a huge improvement over this guy, even if he did write it himself.