Free Republic

Our report yesterday about Angelina Jolie banning press from interviews and requiring interviewers to sign contracts touched off a firestorm. Mostly it was from colleagues who were relieved that we’d finally lifted the veil on all this craziness. And it wasn’t just about FOX News getting banned from the red carpet. That was bad, but it wasn’t the central issue. Jolie treats all the press with hostility unless she can control the outcome of an interaction. Insisting interviewers sign contracts was an affront, considering that her movie is about the murder of a reporter who tried bravely to do his...

Here's a Pop Culture update and we've got the story of Ben Carpenter's harrowing ride on the grill of an 18-wheeler. Some Ronnie Dove video and the heart-warming tale of the puppy from Baghdad. Plus John McCain's "taco" meal, Jolie's hypocrisy, gossip from Hollyweird and some surprising pics of young celebrities.

Angelina Jolie's true colors came out Wednesday as she promoted a film about freedom of the press and then tried to censor all her interviews. Jolie is touting press freedom these days, playing the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in a new movie called "A Mighty Heart." But Jolie turns out to be a mighty hypocrite when it comes to her own freedom of the press. Her lawyer required all journalists to sign a contract before talking to her, and Jolie instructed publicists at first to ban FOX News from the red carpet of her premiere.

How do you spell hypocrite? Apparently it's J-O-L-I-E as the puff-lipped actress proves by banning Fox News from being permitted to interview her to promote her new role as the wife of martyred reporter Daniel Pearl in the upcoming movie "A Mighty Heart." As Jolie touts press freedom, her newest pet cause, she inexplicably put several restrictions on that very freedom of the press -- and not just against Fox News. Fox News' Roger Friedman reports Jolie's hypocrisy.'Mighty' Hypocrite Angelina Jolie Bans FOX and Others From Premiere But Jolie turns out to be a mighty hypocrite when it comes to...

Angelina Jolie's "Understanding" @ pro-HAMAS Arab Children's Conference Hate-Fest in Jordan, 2004 I went to the screening of "A Mighty Heart"--activists Brad Pitt's and Angelina Jolie's movie on the Al-Qaeda murder of Daniel Pearl--expecting a movie with an agenda. And that is exactly what I got. That, plus a Lifetime Channel weepy-damsel-in-distress movie of the week. Muslims are the heroes--NOT the perpetrators--in this "Can't we all just get along?" kumbaya film ostensibly about terrorism. As one would expect from the Jolie-Pitts, "A Mighty Heart" is mostly NOT about the Al-Qaeda murder of Daniel Pearl, killed in cold blood specifically because...

Angelina Jolie's true colors came out yesterday as she promoted a film about freedom of the press and then tried to censor all her interviews. Jolie is touting freedom of the press these days, playing the widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in a new movie called "A Mighty Heart." But Jolie turns out to be a mighty hypocrite when it comes to her own freedom of the press. Her lawyer required all journalists to sign a contract before talking to her and Jolie instructed publicists at first to ban FOX News from the red carpet of...

THE mother of the latest child adopted by Angelina Jolie is a money-hungry heroin addict who NEVER signed the papers to give up her son. Now the thieving, drug-addled woman — who abandoned her baby two days after giving birth — is likely to hound the Hollywood star and lover Brad Pitt for cash. Angelina gallery And unmarried Vietnamese pauper Pham Thu Dung, 29, may even demand they give the boy BACK. Angelina, 31 — who has two other adopted chidren and one of her own — picked up the three-year-old boy from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh city...

BAHAI, Chad -- Here, at this refugee camp on the border of Sudan, nothing separates us from Darfur but a small stretch of desert and a line on a map. All the same, it's a line I can't cross. As a representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, I have traveled into Darfur before, and I had hoped to return. But the UNHCR has told me that this camp, Oure Cassoni, is as close as I can get.

Before she set a toe on the red carpet at the Golden Globes last week, Angelina Jolie’s carefully molded image as humanitarian and mom was already showing some cracks. The Internet had been flooded with reports, picked up from European interviews, that she had called her biological daughter “a blob” with less personality than her two adopted kids, and had criticized Madonna’s adoption of a baby boy from Malawi. Women’s Wear Daily reported she was being difficult about designs from St. John, the staid company whose ads she appears in and whose conservatively elegant gown she wore to the Globes....

HOLLYWOOD - Angelina Jolie has hit out at President George W. Bush, accusing him of turning the world against America. Jolie, who spends much of her time traveling the world helping the poor as an ambassador for the United Nations, insists her work has become harder since Bush was reelected--because no one she meets can understand why Americans voted for him. She says, "When I travel, people feel uncomfortable when I say I'm American. They think it's suspicious that I want to do something positive for them. "I think they wonder why the American people reelected a president who is...

PARIS —  Angelina Jolie's adopted kids tugged at her heart strings a little bit more than her biological daughter did -- at least when she was first born. "I think I feel so much more for Madd and Zee because they're survivors, they came through so much," Jolie says in the new issue of U.K. Elle.

A North Carolina artist intrigued by the public obsession with celebrity has found herself feeding that obsession with a painting of actress Angelina Jolie as the Virgin Mary hovering over a Wal-Mart check-out line. Kate Kretz has painted for 20 years but none of her previous work has garnered the attention given "Blessed Art Thou," showing this weekend at Art Miami, an annual exposition of modern and contemporary art. The painting has gotten much attention from celebrity web sites and blogs. Since the buzz started, the number of daily unique visitors to Kretz's own blog has jumped from an average...

What's the perfect birthday gift for half of the world's most famous perfect couple? Why, a visit to one of the world's most famous houses, of course. Yesterday, Angelina Jolie treated Brad Pitt to an afternoon at Fallingwater.

THREE of Angelina Jolie's bodyguards were arrested by Indian police today following a scuffle with parents at a Mumbai Islamic private school during a movie shoot, police said. Jolie, accompanied by her partner Brad Pitt and their three children, is in India for a month to film scenes for A Mighty Heart, a film about US journalist Daniel Pearl's abduction and murder by Islamic militants in Pakistan in 2002. “We have arrested three of her bodyguards. They may be produced before a local court after police interrogation,” deputy police commissioner Brijesh Singh said. Singh said the bodyguards were arrested on...

They killed Daniel Pearl. Now they threaten the lives of those who dare to tell the tale. From the Daily Mail, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm: Hollywood golden couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have stepped up security after becoming potential terrorist targets. The movie stars - who are currently in India - have been receiving death threats from terror group al-Qaeda. Pitt, 42, and Jolie, 31, are thought to have been targeted because of the political nature of Jolie's new movie A Mighty Heart. The film is based on the life of Daniel Pearl - a Wall Street Journal...

Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, shooting for the film A Mighty Heart based on the life of slain Journalist Daniel Pearl at Pune have been provided with Y category security due to threat to their lives from the al-Qaeda, Intelligence Bureau sources said in New Delhi on Thursday. After assessing the inputs on threat perception from various intelligence agencies, India has provided the desired security to the international stars, sources told UNI. The Maharashtra Police was also informed about the threat perception as the film is based on Pearl, who was assassinated by the al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia --An associate of Angelina Jolie has said a lawsuit may be filed on behalf of the Hollywood actress against the head of a Cambodian aid group she alleges misappropriated her donations. "We are considering filing a lawsuit to recover the hundreds of thousands of dollars that is missing and which he was responsible for," Trevor Neilson, who is the philanthropic and political advisor for Jolie and partner Brad Pitt, told The Associated Press in New York Monday.

Hollywood actress and United Nations spokesmodel Angelina Jolie is wagging her finger at the West for its indifference to refugees. "It's a scandal, really, in such a rich world, that we are not even finding a way to help feed refugee families properly," Jolie vented in the latest issue of the U.N.'s Refugees Magazine. The movie star, a U.N. "good will ambassador" since 2001, singled out America and Australia as insensitive countries that are turning their backs on the persecuted. Many refugees have "died trying to get to the U.S. and Australia," she writes. "But we don't notice. We are...

Hollywood star Angelina Jolie on Tuesday accused the West of cold-heartedness and hypocrisy in trying to shut out migrants, including refugees, from Africa and other hotspots. More than 7,000 people have died trying to get into Europe over the past decade, according to Jolie, whose comments appeared in the magazine "Refugees," published by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for whom she is a goodwill ambassador.

There has, however, been some controversy over the casting. Some black campaign groups say it amounts to a "whitewash" - because Mrs Pearl is mixed race. One website, blacklooks.org, claims: "It is 2006 and I had assumed that the days when white actors took on roles of black people had long passed away."