By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

A strange, angry column about Angelina Jolie

What a strange, angry column Jennifer Graham has written for The Boston Globe about Angelina Jolie.

To read it, you would never know that Jolie had an 87 percent chance of getting breast cancer. Instead, Graham portrays it as a choice any woman could have made, and one that Jolie indulged because she is privileged, rich and has tattoos, which, we are told, proves she likes to mutilate her body.

Why would Graham’s editor not kick this back and say, “Try again”?

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4 Comments

  1. Patricia Bennett

    Dan, After reading some of Graham’s other columns (especially the the Mother’s Day column a while back), I come away wondering why this woman is taking up the Globes space, and who actually thinks its a good idea. Really, is she a published journalist for real? I’ve never seen her work before until her divorce from the radio show host and her columns smack of someone crying out for help. Maybe that’s harsh, but I just don’t get it.

  2. There is an element of girl who cried wolf about Jolie.

    When I heard about this, I couldn’t help wondering how many other women actors had similar procedures, but in the dark of night surrounded by secrecy. She DOES have a habit of using her body as a canvas for self dramatization, only now has been able to do so in a worthy cause.

    While the women in the huts are far more likely to starve or die of cholera than they are to die of breast cancer, there is also an element of boutique medicine here, unavailable to the hoi polloi. Genetic testing and Hollywood-grade reconstruction are out-of-pocket, and those pockets must be very deep.

    I was a little dismissive of Jolie’s widespread canonzation – I’m sorry for her situation, and hope it works for her. But she lives for attention, so her braveness is a little hyped. My reaction was more ‘Meh’ than anger, and Graham’s column is as over the top as Jolie herself.

  3. Sean Griffin

    I guess the only thing for a concerned conservative woman to do to combat this shameful epidemic of breast cancer awareness is to picket the nest breast cancer walk with a sign that says “More women die of cholera. Why aren’t you marching for them?”

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