Angelina Jolie drops in on the troops.

I’ve always thought she was hot.  And she’s a good actress.

This leads me to believe she might be a good person, too.  And that’s a good thing.

So is cleavage, which is the reason for the purely gratuitous photo of the Hollywood hottie to the left.

I found this interesting; it seems the French press are reacting with some shock at the fact that American cops will perp-walk the rich and famous. Tres gauche! Excerpt:

“Brutal.” “Cruel.” “Chilling.”

These are some of the terms French officials have applied to the Strauss-Kahn case — but not to the alleged crime itself. Rather, they are reacting to photos and videos of Stauss-Kahn being subjected to that American ritual known as the perp walk, being handcuffed and escorted by a phalanx of New York police detectives in response to charges that the IMF head sexually assaulted a hotel maid.

Even French journalists have been stunned at the sight:

“Last night, the chilling image of DSK handcuffed nailed our mouths shut,” wrote Stéphane Jourdain, a French reporter for Agence France-Presse, using Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s initials, his familiar French moniker. “Not one journalist asked him for a reaction when he came out.”

This shock on the part of the French may be a pose, of course, but it is far more likely to be real. In this country we’ve become accustomed to such sights, but not so in France, especially when the high and mighty are involved:

“The heart can only contract before these humiliating and poignant images that they’re giving of him,” Jean-Pierre Chevènement, a leftist senator and former minister, wrote on his blog. “A horrible global lynching! And what if it were all a monstrous injustice?”

That latter concern — that the person undergoing the perp walk is, after all, only an alleged perpetrator, and that he or she may actually be innocent — is certainly a valid one. Even in this country, the suitability and possibly prejudicial nature of the perp walk has long been a matter of debate, although courts for the most part have generally upheld the legality of the practice.

In the Strauss-Kahn case, the French are reeling not only from the unaccustomed sight of a perp walk itself, but from the fact that so august and powerful a figure has been subjected to it. French society exhibits more consciousness of class, status, and rank than ours, and its legal system reflects this.

Personally, I would much rather live in a nation where a rich, famous man will be perp-walked than in one where the famous are treated with deference.  This is America, where the ideal is that all people are equal before the law – no one is treated better or worse.  That’s the ideal, anyway; we aren’t perfect about it, but if you want a perfect society, first you have to find some perfect people to run it.

I think the Strauss-Kahn perp walk is a good precedent.

We’ve been working long days here in Puerto Rico, and I have to be off to the site for another, but stay tuned, True Believers – it’s Wednesday, and that means WTF Wednesday, later today.