Brian Doherty on Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

this past week marked the 50th anniversary of the release of "Atlas Shrugged", which is still widely popular, if book sales are any indication (the other day it was #107 on amazon), and the planned movie version of the book featuring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, which i blogged about a while ago here on NGNG...

my old buddy and fellow musician Brian Doherty, ex-gainesville punk rocker (The Jeffersons) and , currently the senior editor of Reason magazine, has written an interesting editorial for today's Wall Street Journal--"Rand and the Right". he explores the long-standing contentious relationship between Rand/her supporters and the conservartive movement/Republican party, and makes a case for the political popularity of her philosophy (at least among book readers, a.k.a. voters). read the column...

speaking of Brian Doherty, a few years back he wrote a cool book review for Reason about "A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead", where one of his conclusions was "the Dead is best understood as an amazing, traveling capitalist commune".

angelina jolie as dagny taggart?

i thought what i'd been hearing about "atlas shrugged" finally coming to the big screen was just some rumor, but apparently it's ON!

but, angelina jolie? as dagny?? weird. and then, i just went and found this splashy announcement from almost a year ago which also tosses brad's name into the mix! (classic snotty snippet)

they're both reportedly admirers of ayn rand's work. (i think they must've skipped over some parts...)

anyway, though, that's cool news. it seems like the film will be released as a trilogy, with the first episode coming out in 2008.

in related news, a USA Today article suggests that corporate execs are starting to dust off the novel, because they're increasingly "under siege by prosecutors, regulators, Congress, employees, investors, a Republican president, even terrorists." buried deep in the article is evidence that a "strike", of sorts, is being carried out by executives and physicians, who are quietly retiring early to avoid the hassle....