Angelina Jolie Pitt Op-Ed Sparks Right-Wing Criticism

The haters come out after Angelina Jolie's ovaries and fallopian tubes are surgically removed

I had never been to Breitbart.com before today. I don’t recommend that you bother, unless you want to experience overwhelming levels of ridiculous. I’d heard of the right-wing rag, er, website. I had heard plenty about it, which is why I never felt the need to check it out. But after reading Angelina Jolie Pitt’s op-ed in the New York Times, I wondered what the crazies were saying about her decision and what her choice meant to them. I couldn’t think of a better place to start.

To their credit, Breitbart posted a pretty straightforward report of Jolie-Pitt’s news, that she had made the decision to have her ovaries and fallopian tubes surgically removed in an effort to remove her chances of ovarian cancer, a disease that killed her mother, grandmother and an aunt. I found her willingness to go public after her double mastectomy two years ago brave and selfless, and I feel the same way about this current news.

She has probably done more for women’s cancer awareness than any hundred doctors ever could, making it clear that she knows how fortunate she is to be able to afford her choice in addressing it, but being clear that there are other options that women should be readily able to discuss with their doctors.

Of course, the Republicans in our Congress are still in line waiting, frothing at the mouth, steam shooting from their ears, anxious to take away the gains in preventative medicine that the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, brought to so many without the ability to previously purchase affordable health insurance, yours truly among them.

But that’s not what they’re talking about over at Breitbart. Here are some excerpts of comments at the story posted on that website. You will most assuredly find these comments repugnant. You will also find that there is low intelligence among the Breitbart faithful, if these comments are any indication:

“She has zero kids. Adopting baboons and other fashion accessories does not qualify as “kids.” Luckily her vanity kept her from ever getting actually pregnant and spreading her foul DNA.” In fairness, there are people over at Breibart occasionally challenging this crap.

“FACT: She has 3 “natural born children” with Brad Pitt & 3 adopted children. If a couple with their resources chooses to raise 6 kids shouldn’t we applaud them for not raising 6 kids on welfare????”

Or this counterpoint to a later ignorant comment:

“Your expression “hacking yourself up” is disgusting. Do you hate just her, or all cancer patients who have surgeries to try to improve their health and extend their life? This wasn’t about “changing the odds.” The “odds” of her dying from the types of cancers these surgeries were meant to prevent were more than just fair after her grandmother, mother, and maternal aunt all died from the same thing. Read a medical article about cancer and gene markers once in a while.”

But most of the comments were of this “class” (and believe me, I use that term facetiously):

• “She also feared developing a brain tumor so she had her brain removed too.” 
• “What a relief, I was afraid she would reproduce.”
• “Boobs cut off. Now this….All she needs now is to trade gender parts with Chris Jenner and the transition will be complete. She’s cutting off parts “just in case”? What the hell??”
• “Guess what, babe? You’re still gonna die someday.”
• “She is not even a woman anymore, just a husk. I understand and sympathize with people who become ill and have to remove things, but to do so simply due to fear of death is beyond insane. Poor woman must have some terrible skeletons in her closet to fear the afterlife to this degree.”

One wonders what horrors these awful people have been through in their lives to make them such horrible human beings. We certainly wouldn’t want a comments section at Breitbart to go too long without an Obama comment either:

“Obozo and the progressives are destroying our country as I type this and someone actually gives a $hit about Angelina Jolies ovaries.”

“same values as moochelle , she was castrated to become the “beard” wife of obama ! —– such unrequited love . ps harvard medical school has used cryogenics preserving the genitals, in case the procedure might someday be reversed . he/she should preemptively have that giant butt surgically reduced .”

These people are disgusting. And this is not to say that every comment was anti-Jolie-Pitt and her choices, as noted earlier. There was a surprising amount of support. Why are those people hanging out at Breitbart?

Thank goodness there was the occasional comment that took me completely away from Angelina Jolie-Pitt’s health issues, and thoughts of my own family’s cancer history, and of the horrid “critics” of her choices:

“Well, I’m not a gynecologist but I would take a look.”

You have to assume that most of the mean, illogical, unscientific comments are from people who have not suffered through cancers in their lives or in the lives of people close to them. And the people who claim to have had cancer and beat it don’t seem at all inclined to understand the definitions of the words heredity, markers, likelihood. No, because to understand that would lose them their point, however weak and ignorant it is.

I applaud Angelina Jolie-Pitt for making what had to have been the most painful of decisions, but one that, in the end, was not as hard a decision as some think. Her choices here have more to do with her family, her children, than it does to do with herself. These are selfless acts, but ones that can benefit so many women by opening up the discussion and not keeping it behind the doctor’s door. Most of the reactions that I’ve read feel about the same way as I do.

She made a decision to have procedures that women over many decades have had to make to save their lives: mastectomies and hysterectomies. Why these things might be considered wrong now because a woman fears for her life because of her family’s horrible history of cancer is beyond me.