...This week, Madonna adopted a baby boy named David from Malawi, Africa. Reportedly, she's also eyeing a little black girl from the same village, and remarked, "She looks just like me." This could only mean that the kid was wearing a cone bra, leg warmers, and a Kabbalah bracelet...
Canada's UNICEF ambassador, Ben Mulroney, also has some concerns:
"It's a bandwagon thing,'' he says. "From the public point of view, there's almost a perversion of the family when people reading this in a magazine and seeing it on TV equate adopting a baby in Africa with owning a chihuahua or a trucker hat or a Birkin bag ... It's unfortunate that these good deeds and this altruism and this willingness to raise a family is coming off as a trend.''
It seems that all these stars are trying to one-up each other with the number of third-world kids they have hanging from every appendage.
It's not just adoption either. I'm sick and tired of standing in long grocery store lineups and having to stare at magazine covers of glamourous stars showing off their ever growing naked "baby-bumps" sticking out from between layers of tight clothing.
Pregnancy and new life is something to celebrate, but I don't need to see the bare evidence at every trimester. Some things should be kept private; not used as publicity stunts.
This is one more example of a culture that regards children as possessions - meant for the use and advantage of adults, rather than as a precious gift to nurture and love.
16 comments:
The message on my girlfriend's shirt applies beautifully to this latest Hollywood trend: "Ignore Celebrities."
RGM - Well said. I want one of those before the next seal hunt.
Did you happen to give any thought at all to the remote possibility that the woman/couple could give the child up for adoption rather than dispose of him/her?
-- Joanne (True Blue) - Mon Sep 18, 04:21:58 PM EDT
This is one more example of a culture that regards children as possessions - meant for the use and advantage of adults, rather than as a precious gift to nurture and love.
-- Joanne - Friday, October 20, 2006
Hmmmm...so people should adopt children, but only if their the "right kind of people" that you "approve of"? Like these children that are being adopted by celebrities aren't going to have good, full and pampered lives. Curiouser and curiouser....
CC - Wow! You did a lot of digging in the archives to come up with that one!
I think I share Ben M's concern that the motives may be slightly suspect. But who knows? It just seems to be the flavour of the month lately.
CC -- Damned if you do, damned if you don't, it would seem.
Oh, I don't know. On the surface, it has the appearance of having bought a baby, but then, the father has asked everyone to butt out, and that he and his village want this for the child.
Did she buy them off? Maybe. But it's a cheap and tawdry feeling to be picking over the bones of the situation without having the first clue about the people involved.
Who knows, maybe Madonna's a good mom. Wanting more children, especially if you can't have them naturally, doesn't strike me as all that selfish.
"This is one more example of a culture that regards children as possessions - meant for the use and advantage of adults, rather than as a precious gift to nurture and love."
Joanne - how can you read her heart?
Joanne - how can you read her heart?
Why all the PR then?
Joanne (True Blue) said...
CC - Wow! You did a lot of digging in the archives to come up with that one!
Google - its not just for breakfast anymore. I admit that I was having a little fun at your expense.
I think I share Ben M's concern that the motives may be slightly suspect. But who knows? It just seems to be the flavour of the month lately.
I would agree though that these adoptions seem more publicity stunt than anything else. But I don't think that the children being adopted are any worse for wear. And to put a positive spin on it, maybe by these celebrities adopting it would encourage others to consider the same.
And to put a positive spin on it, maybe by these celebrities adopting it would encourage others to consider the same.
Well, there's a good point.
And Madonna could teach the kid(s) all about the Christianity too, with props and everything!
Why all the P.R.? I dunno. Perhaps she just wanted the attention. Or, maybe she realized it would attract the media hyenas if it leaked, and she preferred to control the spin. Or could have been a two-fer, attention and control.
I just don't know. I do know that she has two kids of her own, and there has never been a whiff of controversy over her relationship with her biological kids.
The spectacle is not the story, in my mind, anyway. It's whether she'll raise the boy in a loving home.
It's whether she'll raise the boy in a loving home.
That's true.
"Why all the PR then?"
It is true that much of the celebrity news is put out by their own publicists (or the publicists for their employers, like studios or record companies). If a celebrity wannabe like Paris Hilton stopped paying her publicist you would see no more "news" about her on infotainment shows.
But there are some that get covered anyway, either through sheer magnitude of their fame (such as Madonna) or because they are in other news.
Recall your discussion with the gay conservative guy, you were discussing a "child needs a father and a mother" question that came from an article in a British paper's web site. On the same page was a sidebar about Heather Mills. An entire article was written based on a couple of pictures of her wearing a T-shirt after having arrived at the airport from the States. The T-shirt had a reproduction of some LA tattoo artist's work that said "Love Kills Slowly". The article went on and on speculating about how it relates to her divorce case, and about how she was quite happy to show it off to photographers (though it mostly looked like she was just heading for the baggage claim area and being polite while waiting around)
I was reminded of that by a picture of someone, presumably a nanny, arriving at the airport with a kid covered up but you could see a dark skinned leg wearing a running shoe hanging from underneath.
That photographer probably got a few hundred for the picture. Just as Rachel got a couple hundred for her piece of fluff as well. She recycled her standard right wing fare about "Hollyweird", and how conservatives are hard done by in the liberal media (how Rush would be maligned for doing the same thing). Yawn.
That said, Madonna turned 48 this year, and may not be able to have more kids the usual way. So adoption is it.
That said, Madonna turned 48 this year, and may not be able to have more kids the usual way. So adoption is it.
Wow. Pretty well-preserved! And when her adopted child graduates from college, she'll be...
Why should she even teach Christianity? It's a tortured religion as is and she's into something else (it does have good values).
And what would that something else be?.
but you are acting in the same manner as those that protested the Danish cartoons of Mohammed...
Right. And watch out because I am going to set your keyboard on fire.
I'm not sure if this is a Hollywood trend so much as a phenomenon in which tabloids have figured out that putting babies on covers sells magazines.
Some celebrities, like some "regular" people, sometimes want to adopt children from third-world countries. They also like to have children, like normal people. Taking photos of celebrities and putting them on magazines, however, makes a lot of money for tabloid -- taking pictures of YOUR children won't.
This is as much a problem of consumer demand in the U.S. and Europe as it is anything else.
As far as Madonna goes -- it could be a PR stunt. In fact, it most likely IS a PR stunt. But it's probably a PR stunt cooked up to preempt the coverage this would get anyway, as other readers have so far mentioned on this page, regardless of Madonna's consent.
And a few well-publicized adoptions does not a Hollywood "fad" make. There are thousands upon thousands of stars, celebrities, and bigwigs living and working in Hollywood.
As far as regular pregnancies -- well, the desire to have a kid is a hardly a fad, or something we should "prohibit" celebrities from wanting to do.
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