Mary Tutwiler

Brad Pitt for mayor: the plot heard round the world

by Mary Tutwiler

Ah, the Web, the great weaver of rumors. Last week, this headline popped up:  “Brad Pitt reportedly mulling over run to become New Orleans Mayor.” It’s from a Web pub called examiner.com, which according to Wikipedia, “is a news site based in Denver, Colorado that allows local citizen journalists to share their city-based knowledge on a blog-like platform, in over 60 cities in the United States. The site is owned by Clarity Media Group, with the primary investor being billionaire Philip Anschutz, owner of the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), Regal Cinemas, and other media and entertainment companies.”

Before you could say “Huh?” or “Great!” depending on your state of desperation concerning New Orleans city politics, the story was spinning across the globe. The next headline was “Brad Pitt, the mayor?” on dnaindia.com, followed by “Brad Pitt for Mayor,” at limelife.com, and then this behemoth of a headline “Will Brad Pitt Become a Green Movie Star Mayor?
Could the Eco-Friendly Star Transform His Beloved New Orleans?”
from thedailygreen.com.

Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose tracked down the source of the rumor. “It would be a stretch to call the Brad Pitt for Mayor campaign a “grassroots movement” or really an “organization” of any kind. It’s actually a couple of guys who had a conversation, printed up some T-shirts and unintentionally set the Butterfly Effect into motion,” Rose wrote yesterday, in his Sunday slot. For the rest of the story, and it’s a good one, click here.