Eye | Angelina Jolie | Apostle Paul | Daniel Pearl | Daisy Khan | David Brooks | Hillary Clinton | Chris Matthews
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Angelina Jolie on Family, Film & Philanthropy | Vicki Woods & Mario Testino | Vogue US Dec 2010
Writer Vicki Woods did a superb job of creating a multi-dimensional Angelina Jolie in the Vogue interview. Did you know that Jolie has a “seriously filthy laugh”? Her piece is great writing about a woman much admired at AOC.
It was Angelina Jolie’s Esquire interview that launched Anne of Carversville in June 2007. The themes of that essay, including our collective global responsibility not only for dialogue, but understanding of global issues that promote warring points of view, remain richly embedded in our editorial policy.
A humanist, Anne wept over the beheading of Wall Street reporter Daniel Pearl, who was taken hostage in Karachi, Pakistan, following a story.
Jolie became friends with Daniel Pearl’s wife Mariane Van Neyenhoff, who channeled her grief into a positive dialogue with Muslims through the Daniel Pearl Foundation. The two bonded when Angelina played Mariane in “The Mighty Heart”.
Ironically, it seems that Mariane Pearl also read the Esquire 2007 interview, because Pearl contacted the actress about playing her in the movie.
Angelina Jolie and Mariane Pearl
Angelina Jolie & Mariane Pearl Talk with Charlie Rose about “The Mighty Heart” in Angelina’s longer interview with Charlie Rose on June 19, 2007.
Smart Sensuality Angelina Jolie: Virtune Considered in Carversville’s Country Air Anne of Carversville
A key paragraph of that original essay stands out:
Bound by Jolie’s portrayal of Mariane Pearl, the two women believe that “the real story of Daniel Pearl’s death lies in the coming together of good people to fight evil, rather than evil guys coming together to destroy good. The movie “A Mighty Heart” celebrates the fact that some people are just better.” AOC
Anne doesn’t mind being called a ‘rabid liberal’, but she has modeled her adult life on Dagny Taggart, the heroine of “Atlas Shrugged” and was originally a Rockefeller Republican. Traveling the world halftime for 10 years and studying deeply her own country totally changed Anne’s view of America and the need for Americans to participate on an international stage of joint interests and obligations. This study made Anne a liberal — in today’s politico speak — a progressive.
Like Angelina Jolie, Anne believes we have ethical and moral responsibilities to strangers, and not only family members.
The Bell Tolls for Virtue
Living then at the World Trade Center site in New York, Anne first came to Carversville on weekends as a getaway close to one of her clients.
On arrival in Bucks County, she became much more absorbed with American history and the founding of America. After all, the small-town girl still gets tears in her eyes when she hears ‘America the Beautiful”.
Sitting on this patio on an already sweltering June morning in 2007, Anne wrote:
Oh my goodness. I came to Carversville from Manhattan to commune with nature, to drift in rapturous beauty for a day or two … to play Mozart on my new piano … trim my rose bushes … the essence of a simple country weekend.
Instead a men’s magazine and church bells ringing in the distance call me, not to prayer, but to reflection on real virtue in a 9/11 world. George Washington crossed the Delaware a few miles down the road from these prancing butterflies. I wonder what he would think about this increasingly complex notion of democratic principles in our modern world. via AOC
Mosque at Ground Zero
Fast-forward to this week’s New York Times Style section profiles the woman who is at the center of the controversy. Meet Daisy Khan, a former architectural designers who prefers high fashion to the hijab, writes NYT.
Daisy Khan, voice of Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero
To many Americans, Daisy Khan is Satan herself.
Despite her message of inclusion, Ms. Khan has been accused by critics of being an extremist in a moderate’s garb, hiding a conservative Islamic agenda behind a friendly, modern face. “Daisy Khan can say what she wants,” L. Brent Bozell III, the founder of the conservative Media Research Center, said on Fox News last month. “This is what you expect from a radical like her.” via NYT
Most thinking people who disagree with Mr Bozell are called ‘radicals’ in today’s America. The country teeters on a return to the McCarthy era where artists and activists in particular, had to prove their patriotism before members of a very conservative Congress.
Khan’s background, born into an affluent family in Kashmir, and her journey to New York, is a story of Islamic life we don’t read about in America. Shaken by the venom pouring out at her from every corner of America, Daisy Khan says the controversy will be worth the suffering, because interfaith communities are our only hope going forward.
Anne in Philadelphia
A healer and listener, Anne came to live in lower Manhattan, on the south side of the WTC, to generate a positive civic spirit into rebuilding the assault on America. Three of the 9/11 terrorists lived in her Jersey City neighborhood, and she regularly passed the small mosque where they worshipped.
Anne couldn’t bear any longer the rancor in New York over the attempts to build a mosque and community center near the World Trade Center. She hates losing and wants to devote her life to positive action that brings results.
Philadelphia isn’t called the “city of brotherly love” for no reason. Anne arrived in this most wonderful American city searching for an alternative to New York and also to get closer to the spirit — not of Alaska, the last state admitted to the union or to militia members in Montana, who scare the wits out of her — but to the place where America was actually founded.
Only 90 minutes from New York, Anne is four blocks from Independence Hall, and her spirit soared the first days of her arrival.
Across the river in Voorhees, NJ, a mosque is seen as a national model. Denounced by shouting matches similar to those around the WTC mosque, the soft-spoken Zia Rahman, overcame public opposition and created a model of civic cultural exchange in the process.
The story of creating Park 51 is revealed in a new documentary “Talking Through Walls”, which was shown recently in New York. Read on Vorhees mosque seen as a national model via Philadelphia Inquirer.
Talking Through Walls Trailer
Down the Street | National Museum of American Jewish History
A new building has opened near Independence Mall, the National Museum of American Jewish History. Jay Nachman, public relations director for the $150 million museum. “This is where we have the Declaration and the Constitution, the documents that allowed Jews and all Americans to accomplish what we have.”
The museum will open to the general public on Nov. 26 but there’s several pre-opening parties and events previewing the museum. Jerry Seinfeld, Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand were in Philly last night, for the big gala.
All Roads Lead to Jerusalem
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pose for photographers before their meeting in New York on Nov 11, 2010.Generally-speaking community relations seem much better in Philadelphia than New York or Jerusalem, where Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu presented a US plan to his cabinet today that would extend a freeze on West Bank settlements for another 90 days.
We can’t imagine peace in any form coming to the Middle East at this point, which is why Anne wrote: From Israel to Gaza to Tehran to Texas, Men Will Destroy Us All.
Anne waits for the next wave of modern-day McCarthy hearings to begin in America, while the top trending stories on today’s New York Times are For Cats, a Big Gulp With a Touch of the Tongue and Should You be Snuggling With Your Cellphone? (Actually the last article is probably a should read.)
Housewives of God , the lead New York Times magazine article, isn’t getting much play so far, but it is a long, potentially disturbing article for women in America. As conservatives take back the US House of Representatives, we wonder if the Spirit of Justice will be covered up once again in America.
If you remember, then Attorney General had Spirit cloaked because he was tired of looking at her breasts. Ironically, unlike many representations of Lady Justice, commissioned in 1933 at the height of the depression, C Paul Jennewein’s statue of Lady Justice is wearing no blindfold.
This week in America, the tide has turned. We report a Catholic convention on exorcism and the evangelical movement to make women understand that women must submit to men, even though we are important in the grand scheme of events. Women have a complementary and important role in human life, but not the leading one.
Pope Benedict says the exact same words, because God wills it.
Ironically, according to research at Tulane, only one-third of American women believe that God is a “he”, watching their every move. But two-thirds of American women do literally believe in the big guy upstairs, which makes us ripe for picking.
Priscilla Shirer and many conservative Christians believe that the Bible defines gender as a divinely ordained set of desires and duties inherent in each man and woman since the Garden of Eden. Gender is not an act or a choice, but a nonnegotiable gift. To these Christians, the story of Adam and Eve’s creation granted man authority over woman, and they understand the New Testament teachings of Paul and his comrades — in particular, that wives should submit to their husbands — not as cultural relics of the first century but as universal teachings that Christians apply today. via New York Times
Anne shared Biblical wisdom with readers a few months ago in Bound Tightly By the Good Book & God’s Will.
Corinthians 14:34-35
Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. (34)
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. (35)
Sugar to David Brooks
Anne wants to compliment David Brooks on his op ed NYT article “The Crossroads Nation”. A regular David Brooks reader and PBS watcher, Anne had enough of his and Chris Matthews exclusive use of the word “he” in generic discussions about people.
She wrote David Brooks & Artificial Intelligence | No She’s in Our Future.
Anne couldn’t believe her eyes this week when she read from Brooks, bolds from us:
Howard Gardner of Harvard once put together a composite picture of the extraordinarily creative person: She comes from a little place somewhat removed from the center of power and influence. As an adolescent, she feels herself outgrowing her own small circle. She moves to a metropolis and finds a group of people who share her passions and interests. She gets involved with a team to create something amazing.
Then, at some point, she finds her own problem, which is related to and yet different from the problems that concern others in her group. She breaks off and struggles and finally emerges with some new thing. She brings it back to her circle. It is tested, refined and improved.
The main point in this composite story is that creativity is not a solitary process. It happens within networks. It happens when talented people get together, when idea systems and mentalities merge. via NYT
Thank you, David Brooks. Anne knew your mobile alert would catch that headline. It’s just one small step forward for humanity. Perhaps, you’re just quoting Gardner. Even so, the shes stood.
Rotten Tomatoes to Chris Matthews
Chris Matthews this week had the audacity to suggest that Hillary Clinton would have become president, if only she had shared her sense of humor with the public.
Matthews continues to only use the male pronoun, as if women don’t exist, but to make a stupid comment about Secretary of State Clinton’s wit when Matthews did everything possible to descredit Hillary Clinton suggests that he believes women must have a very short memory.
We quote from the Washington Post:
Under pressure from feminist groups and his own bosses at MSNBC, Chris Matthews apologized yesterday for remarks about Hillary Clinton that he now admits sounded “nasty.”
For 10 days, the “Hardball” host had doggedly insisted he was just reciting a bit of history when he said on the air that “the reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around.”
But protests against those and other remarks by Matthews reached a peak yesterday when the presidents of such groups as the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority and National Women’s Political Caucus sent a joint letter of complaint to NBC News President Steve Capus.
There’s nothing worse than a man who can’t admit he’s as sexist as they come. Chris Matthews is at the front of the parade, even if he is from Philadelphia. Anne was among the women who complained directly about Matthews to NBC.
For a guy who did everything he could do to discredit Hillary Clinton to Americans, to suggest that Hillary’s “problem’ was not being funny enough is just so not manup.
Anne of Carversville rejects the belief that women should follow men around the world, because God has commanded our silence on important topics involving global leadership.
The sooner Chris Matthews starts listening to Angelina Jolie and Hillary Clinton, the more effective he will be as a man who makes sense as a meaningmaker for America.
Note: this is the first in a new series of current articles that connect dots, past and present, into the Anne of Carversville mindset. We want readers to have a sense of how our perspective connects many events in fashion, popular culture, politics, women’s rights, business, religion and the arts into one really-big story.
