[Here are her actions](Madonna funds six orphanages through her Raising Malawi charity and is setting up an orphanage for 4,000 children in a village outside the capital, Lilongwe. ):
Why the fuck do you care about the reasons she’s doing this?
When my family adopted our black baby*, we were also given a choice of baby by the Church of England Children’s Home. My parents just said “first available”, but they could have picked had they wished.
Shayna your intensely hostile reactions are curious to say the least. It’s just a message board. Get out some.
In general parents who adopt to “do good works” do a poorer job of it than those of us who honestly admit to adoption as serving our selfish desires to parent. I may have an incorrect impression of this particular parent and just been rubbed the wrong way by a statement out of context. But my kids don’t owe me for having sired them or adopting her and laying that message on your kid is unfair. Thinking of your adoptive child as less yours than your biological child, which is the impression I got, would not be a good sign.
Me? I’ll go back to ignoring Madonna and her schtick the best I can. I don’t really care.
Oh fercrissakes… I didn’t say any thing negative about your parents. I am, however, pretty damn annoyed that you refuse to see the correlation between your adoption and Madonna’s.
What you’ve said on this board has been pretty critical of someone’s family, with very little justification that I can see. If you think it’s appropriate to pass judgement on someone’s family when you don’t have all the details of their family life, you have no standing to complain when someone passes judgement on your family under the same circumstances.
As near as I can tell, you have no reason to think that she’s doing anything ethically questionable, except that she happens to be a celebrity who (I gather) has engaged in other, non-child-rearing activities you find objectionable. Unless you’ve got specific evidence that she only adopted this kid to further her own celebrity, it strikes me as being in extremely bad taste to assume that’s why she adopted. The fact that she has done other things to put herself in the public eye, things unconnected with her being a parent, is not sufficient.
I think there’s just way too many opinions about what celebrities ought not to do. They should shut up and sing, they should stop adopting poor kids, yadda yadda yadda. My idea is this: focus on what you ought and ought not to do yourself, and let Madonna make her own decisions.
Sorry but celebs can’t have it both ways. They chose to put themselves in the public eye. She in particular chose to make this a public event. She released statements and went on Oprah. If you go public and accept the adulation of Oprah, then you have no choice but to live with the fact that you also annoy others. Adoption is of meaning to some of us. How someone presents it from their bully pulpit of celebrityhood is a just subject for us to comment on. Sarafeena is right. To the degree that she is public here, in The Pit, insulting her (or me), is fair game. Her parents are not.
Just out of curiosity, what did I post that you interpreted as discussing the legality of commenting on celebrity behavior? And, FWIW, my interest is not Madonna. My interest is adoption and how it is presented by those in power to influence public perception.
You said that your critique of celebrities was something celebrities just have to live with, as if anyone suggested that celebrities ought not to be criticized. I am not saying that you shouldn’t criticize celebrities, I am just saying your judgments here are a ill-informed and poorly articulated. For example, you say “adoption means something to some of us,” assuming that adoption means nothing to Madonna despite the fact that she’s adopted children and promotes adoption on national television.
My advice is to do something besides gripe to a bunch of know-it-alls on the Internet. Like adopt a child yourself. If you’ve already done so, then go spend time with that child.
Let’s see, you questioned their ethics and you implied that they would have chosen a particular baby based on…what, again? Explain to me why you believe they might have found one infant preferable to another?
They are both adoptions…I guess that’s a correlation.
I am in no way critical of Madonna’s family. I am critical (not even critical, just skeptical) of Madonna. I am not passing judgement, I am speculating that there might be something bigger at work.
When did I ever say that Madonna has engaged in activities I find objectionable? Would you please find the post where I even implied that? In fact, I believe the only thing I have said about her is that her charitable works are admirable.
What I am suggesting that when people go on Oprah to talk about something they claim is a private family matter, maybe they are being a touch disingenuous about that.
I don’t think she is doing it to further her own celebrity. I do think it MAY have something to do with bringing attention to the problems in his home country, and I think that is of questionable ethics. I am not “assuming” this is why she did it, but I do have questions in my mind.
That’s the thing that bothers me…what you say about doing good works. I don’t know, either, if Madonna’s words really reflect her feelings on the matter, but the attitude seems weird to me, and not at all what I have heard so many other adoptive parents say. The attitude typically is “we are so lucky,” not “the child is so lucky.” I love that adoption is being promoted, but I just wonder if the right message is being sent about the ultimate meaning of adoption. The statement she makes about wanting to go “to a third world country and giving a life to a child who might not have had one…” I think it DOES set this kid up to have to feel like Madonna was his “savior”, and I am not sure that is healthy.
On what do you base your speculation? Why are you skeptical about Madonna’s adoption in a way you would not be similarly skeptical about anyone else’s adoption? (Assuming, of course, that you don’t always look for ulterior motives when someone adopts.)
You seem to have quite a grudge against her, from your reactions in this thread. Also, I know you’re a conservative Catholic, and Madonna has a reputation for using Catholic imagery in ways that many Catholics felt was inappropriate. I figured there was a connection between the two. Otherwise, I’m at a loss to explain your attitude towards her, which is very hostile to someone over what to all appearances is a selfless act.
When have you ever known a new parent who did not want to talk about their baby? Most people have to settle for the office water cooler. Madonna has Oprah. Same deal, different scale.
So, she wants to bring attention to a desperatly impoverished nation. That’s unethical how, exactly?
That’s a pretty fine distinction you’ve got there. Would it make you any less insulted if I said I didn’t assume your parents would have cut corners if it meant they could have gotten you home sooner, but that I have “questions” in my mind?
Where did she say anything about buying their way to the front? She said they would have cut corners if they could have. She didn’t say anything about bribery.
Seriously, it was that quote about going to a third world country and giving a child a life who wouldn’t otherwise have one. This makes me skeptical about her motivations. Now, you may disagree with me as to whether or not this is an acceptable motivation, but don’t you think that implies that she is doing it as some kind of symbolic gesture?
I don’t have a hostile attitude towards her. Some of her remarks about this one issue rubbed me the wrong way. You are making assumptions that simply aren’t true.
I’m sure Madonna has plenty of friends she could talk to…she doesn’t need Oprah’s TV cameras.
Unethical to use the emotions of another person to do so. IF that is what she is doing.
I formed my questions based on Madonna’s own words. Have you talked to my parents?
So what kind of corners might those have been, then? And what kind of corners are OK to be cut, and what aren’t?
I can see that, I guess, but that doesn’t preclude other motivations for adopting the child. I doubt anyone wants to be a parent just for one specific reason. There’s usually a range of motivations, not all of them perfectly noble.
You seem to be going out of your way to find the least favorable interpretation of what ought to be a laudable act. Comes off as very hostile. Not Shayna-hostile, but it sure looks like you’ve got a personal axe to grind here.
You’ve never had a complete stranger talk to you about their new baby? I think most parents would love to go on Opera to talk about their kid, they just can’t get the booking.
I don’t follow.
Yes.
Okay, not really, but how freaky would it be if I had?
Seriously, though, what you’re basing your judgements on is incredibly slight. Slight enough that the difference between drawing conclusions about Madonna’s motivations and drawing conclusions about your parent’s motivations is negligible. You don’t know anything about how Madonna feels towards this kid, or how she plans to raise him. You’ve got a couple of ambiguously worded statements from a morning talk show. I’ve seen a few posts from you where you talk about your parents, and how you were adopted. Frankly, I think I’ve got more information to draw conclusions from than you do.
Maybe the person in charge of the adoption is in your dad’s Kiwani’s club.
The most important thing is, a kid goes to a home with loving parents. Your folks already knew they were that sort of parent. If it happens that the person in charge of placing the kid also knows this about your parents, I wouldn’t see a problem with circumventing some of the regulations needed to insure the parents will treat the kid right.
Incidentally, have you ever read Dan Savage’s book, The Kid, about how he and his boyfriend adopted a kid in Oregon under an open adoption? I mention it because of the earlier exchange about choosing a baby. In open adoptions, you don’t choose the kid, but you do choose the birth mother. I mention this just to highlight that even in the US, how Madonna ended up with her new baby is not totally unheard of.