Aaaaaggggggghhhhhhhh!

I am very sick of the Madonna thing. Very sick. And I'm sick that I'm even posting about it BUT the two places I go to "get away" from adoption issues on-line, Salon.com and one of my favorite blogs whose site I won't link to since it is full of swears and political thoughts that adoption.com won't like (but e-mail me at adoptrussiablog@adoptionmail.com if you'd like a link) both have comments on the old material girl and so I can't get away. I might have to actually get off the computer and read a book, I'm so annoyed by it all.

You are probably asking, Adrienne, what the heck does Madonna have to do with Russian adoption, anyway? Well, I answer, Madonna adopting from Malawi seems to equate baby buying to some people, and so international adoption then equates baby buying, and if you are adopting from Russia (think adopting a Caucasian child) not only are you buying a baby but you're racist as well. So I think it does all relate, in a roundabout, disturbing way.

On Salon, Mary Kane, an adoptive parent, writes pretty much what I've been thinking about the whole Madonna thing. Here's the link. As usual, however, the best thing about this essay is the letters people have sent in reponse. To read the voices of sanity, read the starred letters. To read the voices of the population at large, read all the letters. There's a lot of "baby buying" discussion going on there - and the gloves are OFF.

The other blog (the one I love to read but cannot link to due to profanity, etc. - like I said, email me if you want the link) comments on Madonna's baby's biological father and what he's said in the press. A number of bloggers on this site have also commented: here, here,
and here, to mention a few.

I don't have all that much to add to the discussion since it's all being said, but I'll leave you with one question: with all the children around the world who need homes, why did she pick a child from a country that a)does not allow foreign adoptions, and b)who has a living father?

I understand Africa - why not Ethiopia or Liberia, two countries that allow adoptions by foreigners?

And why this boy? I admit to being sceptical about the so-called statements by the father - not that he would have those emotions but their timing seemed very media-created to me - but why not choose a child whose parents were dead? If there are 800,000 children in the orphanages in Malawi then surely she could have found one who truly had no one?

That's the only and last thing I'm going to say about M.