"Branjelina" - Gag me!

Last week’s “People”? Magazine featured Angelina Jolie on the cover and referred to her as being the matriarch of the “World’s Most Beautiful Family”? at least 4 times. (It may have been more than 4 times, but after 4 my gag reflex couldn’t take anymore.)

She is also an “extraordinary humanitarian.”?

I just can’t decide whether Jolie - or the adoration surrounding her - is more revolting.

Let’s review: This is a woman who poached another woman’s husband. I know, I know — “we don’t’ know what goes on behind closed doors”? yeah yeah. But -- these doors were actually pretty wide open. Brad Pitt wanted “out”? of his marriage with Jennifer Anniston, and he wanted to exit with Jolie. I actually hold him more responsible than Jolie for the end of his marriage, but he’s not featured on the cover of “People”? nor is he considered a “great humanitarian,”? so back to Jolie.

She picks up orphaned children like pebbles off a beach — and good for her by the way. I hope she picks up more. For their sake. But big deal. She has wealth and time and can send the little ones to a nanny whenever she feels like it. This does not a great humanitarian make. And - she’s pregnant by a man to whom she’s not married, and has not publicly set a date to marry. This is good for the world’s children?

It’s so easy to be a “great humanitarian”? when it requires nothing of our own humanity. No sacrifice. No denial of our own passions. Nothing of us personally.

Sacrifice would be staying away from Brad Pitt as long as he was married, and encouraging him to keep his marriage vows. I mean, what’s the point of making those vows if we give them up when it’s no longer easy, or fun, or another person we think we want comes into our lives? Marriage is always about more than just the two people involved or their "happiness" at the moment. The harder it gets — the more those vows are there to help us through the hard times, and very likely on to much better times.

Helping to keep even one marriage intact would have really been for Jolie to have done something noble for the world’s children.

Most of all, a “great humanitarian”? would not have willingly caused another human being — Jennifer Anniston — so much pain, especially public pain. But whether posing as a family on the cover of Vanity Fair with Pitt just months after the Pitt/Anniston separation, or now on the sands of Namibia where “the beautiful family”? requested “privacy”? as they were endlessly photographed being “great humanitarians,”? Jolie has consistently, willingly and unnecessarily devastated and degraded another human being. And Pitt — whose calling was to be Anniston’s greatest protector, became the source of what has almost certainly been her greatest pain.

I can’t imagine what Anniston went through. (She may now even realize she is well rid of someone who could treat her like Pitt has.) But I know it’s tragic that more of us don’t care. Not for the Pitt, Anniston, Jolie crowd - I mean, this is Hollywood afterall. It's tragic because of what it says about what our culture things thinks about honoring and protecting marriage - and kids.