Jolie on Refugees

I don't really share the objections that people frequently raise to celebrities getting involved in political causes. Donating what one can donate to good causes is a good thing to do. And as Tyler Cowen has observed, in the developed world one of the scarcer commodities out there is attention is grabbing people's attention is something movie stars are very good at doing. Watch this video of Angelina Jolie talking about refugees living in Syria and you'll see:



This is an issue a lot of people have tried to write about and raise awareness of, but the level of action has thus far been pretty tiny. But this is a hell of a powerful anecdote, and Jolie's able to tell it in a way that gets more people's attention than if it was just another article in a highbrow magazine somewhere.