OMFG!

(Via Crooked Timber) Who thought this was a good idea? How are they going to turn this ideological, starkly elitist behemoth into a watchable movie? Though making it into a movie may be the vehicle of Ayn's ultimate revenge; we'll have no choice but to sit through John Galt's rant at the end. I'm a little puzzled though; I sort of assumed that Atlas Shrugged isn't a book that would "play in Peoria". I suppose that if you market it right people wouldn't have to be familiar with the book. Hell, that might even increase sales. But really, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? One wonders how Angelina reconciles her philanthropic work with her interest in Objectivism. Whilst we were discussing this dubious turn of affairs last night a friend of mine pointed out that Ayn Rand would have eaten Angelina for lunch. As an aside, when did it become de riguer to dump all over Atlas Shrugged? I mean yeah, its kind of crazy, but calling it a book suited to insecure 15 year old boys is a bit much. I'm not a rabid Objectivist by any means, but there's at least some merit to Ayn's philosophy, yes? This topic came up in conversation with some friends not so long ago. We were talking about how our ideologies were changing as we got older, and I brought up the fact that I was actually getting more, rather than less, liberal in my old age. One of the people I was speaking with said something to the effect that I'd come to the realization that Ayn Rand was crazy after all. My response was that Objectivism would be a fine philosophy if we were all white, Protestant males. Further walking in the world has convinced me that Objectivism's disregard of power differentials and structural inequalities makes it problematic as a theoretical framework in a lot of situations. But it would seem to me that, having recognized these shortcomings, its easy to derive a synthesis which recognizes these inequalities and takes them into account. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how this one plays out.