Brad Pitt shows up for a car
– 3 min read
Mercedes held an event in LA last night to premiere a new car. I am not really a car person, I’ll drive a car until it can’t be driven anymore, but I do I insist on driving stick, and since fewer and fewer car manufacturers are offering models in manual transmission, every decade-plus or so when it’s time to consider an update, I’m limited to whatever comes in stick and don’t care to try an automatic, even if it might be a better looking car.
This Mercedes though, it’s a good-looking car. Does it come in stick?
To be clear, even if it did come in stick, it probably wouldn’t be an option for us since we have dogs and those two punks would ruin it in ten minutes.
Since this event was happening in Los Angeles, there were a few celebrities invited to attend. The short list included Jacob Elordi and Brad Pitt who, of course, is affiliated now with F1 and Mercedes because of the movie. He was there with Ines de Ramon (photos here) who was wearing a red dress.
So he showed up for a car… but not his daughter’s graduation.
Zahara Marley Jolie graduated from Spelman College this past weekend. Here is the moment her name was called during convocation.
@complex Zahara Jolie has officially graduated Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's daughter Zahara graduated from Spelman College with a psychology degree. During the ceremony, her name was read as "Zahara Marley Jolie," leaving out "Pitt" from her last name. Zahara previously introduced herself as "Zahara Marley Jolie" during her Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority induction in 2023. [🎥: GETTY/ Spelman yt/ via @PEOPLE ] #angelinajolie #zaharajolie #spelman #graduation ♬ original sound - COMPLEX
I mean we’ve already had more than enough confirmation that at least four of the children – Maddox, Zahara, Shiloh, and Vivienne – no longer use Brad’s last name so this isn’t a surprise, but it is yet another reminder that he has not been a part of their lives for a long, long time. In fact, this coming September it’ll be ten years, a full decade, since he’s been seen with his kids.
For a decade his defenders have argued that this is not his choice, that Angelina is to blame for turning his children against him. Shiloh is about to turn 20 – TWENTY! – next week. She legally changed her name two years ago; like her older siblings, she is independent, frequently seen without her mother, appearing in K-pop videos and figuring out her own path. All of these kids have grown up on the internet. Like, Zahara just spent almost four years in Atlanta at university. So the notion that Angelina has somehow locked them away from the light of the truth is a convenient way to deny the most obvious and straightforward explanation.
But Brad Pitt, like Leonardo DiCaprio, is the beneficiary of memory eyes. Memory eyes is when we see people how they used to look and not what they look like now. Not always a bad thing. We do this with our loved ones. But we also do this with our idols. Brad often talks about the trappings of fame, how it’s been such a f-cking drag on his life, that he never wanted this as part of the deal. Fame, though, has inoculated him from the reputational damage his divorce and subsequent estrangement from his children that a woman or even a less conventionally attractive man would have experienced. In this case, the fame has definitely been an asset.
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