• I think it’s really rude to fire a woman for calling two black employees “jungle bunnies” when swears she didn’t know it was offensive. [RR]
• Brandy’s E! True Hollywood Story premieres tomorrow at 6pm. It will probably be pretty boring until the last 10 minutes. [CL]
• To make matters less interesting, Brandy and Tyrese are not getting married. Did anyone ever believe they were? [C&D]
• Now that I know Morgan Freeman is playing Nelson Mandela in a new movie, I can’t picture another American actor playing the role. Although Angelina Jolie would probably audition. []
• Diddy’s lashing out over false media reports that he dropped Cassie from Bad Boy. With a voice like that, he could never let her go! [SP]

I really don’t care what Mariane Pearl wanted. Okay, that sounded like a harsh thing to say about a victim of tragedy. Let me back track a bit. Of course I care about the plight of Mariane Pearl — the horrible death of her journalist husband, Daniel, at the hands of Islamic militants — and I admire the courage it took to write her book, A Mighty Heart, which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie turned into a movie that premiered yesterday at Cannes. But the caring? It only goes so far.

Everyone wants to use the fact that Mariane Pearl, a biracial woman, suggested that Angelina Jolie play her in the movie as an excuse for one of our biggest white movie stars to parade around in glorified black face and a kinky wig in a major motion picture. In the year 2007! It’s an excuse that doesn’t fly with me. So, I repeat. I don’t care what Mariane Pearl wanted — there is no way I will ever, ever, ever go see a movie in which a woman who looks like this:

plays a woman who looks like this:
.

In terms of racial fairness, I expect little from Hollywood. Still, when talented black and biracial actresses are forced to play the wife, the sexual vixen, or the ghetto buffoon because there are no real roles written for them, it kills me that a woman who counts herself as worldly as Angelina Jolie does has the gall to take a meaty part out from under them. Just because a trip to the tanning salon and a bad wig allowed Jolie to slightly resemble the woman she was playing, it’s not right. This is an issue that goes way beyond the physical, but, in Hollywood, narcissism trumps common sense and decency at every turn.

If she ever decides to be an actress when she grows up, little Zahara Jolie-Pitt better watch her back. Her mom might steal all her parts.

Someone should tell Common that rappers are supposed to uphold a facade of coolness at all times. Common is more animated than a dancer in his Peace, Love, and Gap ads as he explains his two new movie roles — starring Angelina Jolie and Denzel Washington, respectively. Because he’s Common and not, say, one of the Ying Yang Twins, I think it’s kind of cute.

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