Being Brad Pitt’s Mom Means You Can’t Have an Opinion

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Katie Loud

Photo of Brad Pitt and Mother Jane

Before joining forces with Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt was known primarily for being hot, an endeavor he was remarkably good at. He has moved from eye candy to political awareness, though, and he has shown to be even better at this undertaking. Whether giving time and money to victims of Hurricane Katrina or raising awareness about issues such as same-sex marriage, Pitt is a guy that’s used his popularity to get more than laid.

But does that mean that his entire family agrees with him? Apparently not …

From Yahoo News:

In a letter to her hometown paper, the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader, Jane Pitt writes that Christians, like herself, should not refuse to vote for Mitt Romney just because he is a Mormon. The published response to an earlier opinion in the paper describes President Barack Obama’s opponent for president as “a family man with high morals, business experience, who is against abortion, and shares Christian conviction concerning homosexuality.”

What I don’t understand, though, is why this is news.

My mother was raised in an extremely right-wing family. As she grew into adulthood (at the height of the sixties, I might add), she developed her own ideas and opinions, becoming quite liberal. There were never any turkey-throwing incidents at Thanksgiving over politics or anything, and I had no clue how different her views were from the rest of her side of the family until I was nearly an …

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Mom Chronicles 7-Year-Old Daughter’s “Obesity” Battle in Vogue

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Katie Loud

Photo of Dara Lynn Weiss and Daughter Bea
Let’s talk about fat, shall we? In fact, let’s just throw caution to the wind and talk about the potential damage parents can do to their children in the name of curtailing the national trend toward childhood obesity.

Or we could just talk about what a crazy bitch Dara-Lynn Weiss, who recently wrote a piece for Vogue focused on the alleged need for her 7-year-old daughter’s need to lose weight, is.

Incidentally, her daughter Bea was 4’4” and weighed 93 pounds. She is now sixteen pounds lighter.

And, in case I haven’t already mentioned it, seven.

According to Weiss, Bea’s diet was recommended by her pediatrician, who felt that “she was clinically obese and could be at risk for high blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes.”

Just for shits and giggles, I put Bea’s stats into the BMI calculator at the National Heart Lung Institute. It came out as normal. While, to be completely fair, the CDC has a pediatric BMI calculator that does classify Bea as “overweight” considering her age, I think there’s more than meets the eye here.

To wit, here’s what Weiss had to say about Bea’s dietary habits … and her own actions undertaken as…

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Put Down the Electronics, Revitalize Your Love Life?

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Katie Loud

For Christmas this year, my mother got me a Nook. She vacillated between the easy reader and one of the more advanced models, eventually going for the simpler (and cheaper, although she kindly made up the financial difference in a Barnes and Noble gift card) route.

Why?

Well, because I have an iPhone that’s pretty much my life. I mean, that baby has a camera, camcorder, calculator, and so on, never mind the internet options. I read the news on my iPhone. I get e-mail and texts on my iPhone. I keep in touch with friends, loved ones, and total strangers via Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone. I got notified about my tax return on my iPhone.

Well, you get the idea.

And so did my mom since she decided that, between the iPhone and my laptop, there was no earthly need to give me yet another internet-enabled device when the Simple Touch would certainly meet my needs as a book equivalent (well, almost-equivalent).

Yup, I’m definitely a card-carrying member of the “Technology Age”, and the things that have been lost along the way only bother me when I think about them.

Like now, as I’m contemplating Chicago Portfolio student Jake Reilly’s self-titled “Amish Project”, the gist of which involved dropping from the world of social networking—in other words, going without “Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, texting, and more for 90 days”.

This is a fascinating story to me, actually, namely because I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t pull it off. (I’m one of those annoying people that inform my Facebook followers know when I wake up in the morning and Tweet about the weather)

What I found relevant to you lovely ZL readers, though, is this: apparently, Reilly’s love life took a turn for the better that clearly coincided with his life change as he recaptured the heart of his long-term girlfriend by stamping a Christmas message into the snow outside her window.

From Yahoo News Brad Sylvester’s recent interview with Reilly:

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