Celebrity adopto-babies

WorldNetDaily has published four excerpts from Chapter 1 of the book on four consecutive days. Today's final offering describes what the authors call "pathological parenting" – the strange practices celebrities employee to have or adopt children. Get your copy of "Hollywood, Interrupted" at ShopNetDaily.

Assuming a female's child-bearing years are between the ages of 18 and 44, an actress, model, or singer is likely to be toiling in her demanding career as her biological clock ticks away oblivious to her Q rating. Instead of settling down with a long-term suitor, a starlet is usually juggling a buffet of hunks, or dames in the lesbian chic era, further pushing her away from the traditional motherhood route.

There is almost no incentive for the typical celebrity to lay down traditional roots, so Hollywood players not in committed relationships have taken it upon themselves to make their public adoption of children a high public-relations priority.

"I was adopted purely for publicity purposes," Christina Crawford recalled in an interview. "My entire childhood was made public. I was trained on how to smile for the camera, how to answer reporters' questions. I had special clothes worn only for photo sessions. And when the press left, (my siblings and I) became less valuable."

The more alternative a lifestyle, the more noise the celebrity adoption brings. Few know about the adopted children of Jamie Lee Curtis and her husband, Christopher Guest, (until she wrote her best-selling children's book on the subject, "Tell Me Again About the Night I Was Born") or Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, yet celebrities like Angelina Jolie and Paula Poundstone have made their accumulation of children a made-for-television lesson for society to behold. However, according to Dr. Laurel Bernau, a therapist in Santa Barbara, there are special issues endemic to the celebrity adoption. Dr. Bernau told The Washington Times of one famous client's high-profile adoption of a baby girl. "When the child grew older and her legs didn't look as shapely as her mother's, the narcissistic woman began telling all her friends, 'Of course she doesn't look like me – she's adopted.'"

In 1997, an unknown 30-something, unmarried woman named Calista Flockhart got her big break when David E. Kelley gave the stage actress the title role in the television series "Ally McBeal." No one put a gun to Flockhart's head when she opted for career over settling down and having children.

Flockhart's adoption of a baby boy in 2002 came as a surprise to the legion of middle-class fans who related to the show's morality tale about the sacrifices single working women make. Her Dachau chic physique had already telegraphed a distress call that the stress and 16-hour workdays of a successful TV star had taken their toll; her collapsing on the set from exhaustion confirmed it. What made her think she could carry the added burden of a child – sans partner?

"Ally McBeal" costar Dyan Cannon told "Access Hollywood," "She needs something to love when she gets home and on her days off."

The obvious rejoinder, of course, lost on anyone within a 50-mile radius of Flockhart and Cannon's moral code, is that a child needs someone to love them full time.

Lara Croft Womb Trader: Anatomy of a celebrity adoption

Actress Angelina Jolie showcased her most irresponsible life choice when she boasted on ABC's "20/20" in July 2003 of her new role as an adoptive single mother to a Cambodian orphan. The twice-divorced, Oscar-winning actress – herself a product of celebrity family dysfunction (her father, actor Jon Voight, and her mother, French actress Marcheline Bertrand, divorced when she was 3) – discovered the boy during a stint as goodwill ambassador for the United Nation's High Commission for Refugees. Considering the "Gia" star is a refugee from her own family, her new U.N. role seems tailor-made for her.

Voight revealed to the E! Channel in 2002 that he is estranged from his daughter since they starred with one another in "Lara Croft Tomb Raider" and claimed that his daughter has "serious emotional problems." "She's been staying away from me because she knows I've been trying to reach her to get help," he said to an audience of millions. Jolie later called his comments "unforgivable."

Jolie's career has flourished despite (or perhaps because of) a public persona emphasizing the bizarre. She brags of blood rituals, a history of self-mutilation and an obsession with the funeral sciences. Her marriage to four-time divorcee and fellow Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton earned the couple the status as King and Queen of the Hollywood Goth Prom. Tales of Jolie's unconventional upbringing – apparently her mother allowed for her to have a live-in boyfriend at age 14 – paired with Thornton's phobias and colorful past created a portrait of a modern Hollywood couple unwilling to conform to societal norms.

The media was agog with their madness and the lurid tales of bloodletting and wild physical interludes. Earlier, Jolie's behavior at the 2000 Academy Awards exposed her to a flood of gossip when she passionately kissed her "date" after winning an Oscar for her role in "Girl, Interrupted," offering the jaw-dropping line: "I am just so in love with my brother! He just held me and said he loved me. ... I have nothing without you. You are the strongest, most amazing man I've ever known, and I love you."

Up until that point, all assumed her date was her boyfriend or her husband and not her brother. The odd sequence of events in front of a billion people watching on TV around the world forced a PR defensive that only served to expose her untraditional background to further scrutiny.

Cut to Cambodia. Jolie, in a role of her own making, seeks sanctuary through a child – a child she names Maddox Chivan Thornton Jolie, abandoning his given Cambodian name of Rath Vibol. "Maddox was the last child I saw," Jolie confided to Barbara Walters during their "20/20" interview. "And he was asleep. And they put him in my arms and he stayed asleep. And then he opened his eyes and he smiled. He stared at me for two minutes, and then he smiled. And I cried and felt like this kid is OK being in my arms and he accepts me. He never cried. And ... we just hung out and became friends."

Maybe when he's older, like say, 4 or 5, the two can cut themselves and wear amulets around their necks filled with the other's blood – a show of unconditional commitment to one another. To acquire Maddox, Jolie says she and Billy Bob had to undergo a rigorous background check administered by the U.S. Immigration Service to see if the two would make fit adoptive parents.

"As an actor, it's always weird," Jolie complained. "You're being evaluated, and then you've got these crazy stories about you. And you're being evaluated whether you can be a parent and they say that you're nuts."

The bumbling bureaucrats must have forgotten to ask Thornton if he had any intention of being a father to the kid. They also missed a Rolling Stone cover piece that described the couple as "America's most dangerous marriage." Additionally, they failed to translate one of Jolie's tattoos – "Quod Me Nutrit Me Destruit," which means "That Which Feeds Me Destroys Me" – and, in the end, signed off on the high-profile, high-risk adoption, anyway.

Lara Croft Womb Trader, like all dysfunctional starlets with a sudden urge for immediate unconditional love, was awarded legal custody of Maddox, who quickly became the catalyst for the demise of the storied alternative couple.

"Billy and I just became very different people," Jolie lamented as scenes of a mohawk-sporting toddler played in the background. "I started focusing on traveling a lot, and really wanted to, and knew Cambodia, and really wanted to adopt a child ... and that was before Maddox even came home. And, by the time Maddox came home, we were kind of living apart."

"I never had the feeling that they were going to make it because of both of their serious problems, and they've both been very public about them, so I never really held out any hope," Voight said. He wasn't alone.

Jolie boasts of a master plan to raise Maddox on her own, splitting time between the United States and the mystical Cambodia to enable Maddox to stay in touch with his native heritage. Missing from Jolie's strategy, however, is a father for young Maddox, as she has ruled out getting married again or having a child with another man – or woman.

"I think now having a child would mean that this person would become a father to my son, and that would have to be permanent, and I haven't had a good experience with that, and with my father, or with the men in my life, seeing long relationships. So, I don't want to have a temporary father for my son."

Why is there no concern whatsoever on placing a full-time male role model permanently in his life? Didn't Anthony Perkins' star turn as Norman Bates laid out the inevitable ending of that horror story line?

Given her estranged relationship with her father and now Billy Bob Thornton, the one male in her life who looks to be front and center for the kid is Uncle James Haven. Maybe Jon Voight can utilize some of his reserve Hollywood cache to save the kid and cast him in a celebrity reality series entitled "Run, Maddox, Run." Only in celebrity sycophant Barbara Walters's hyperbolic chamber of inverted values and nonjudgmentalism could the expressions of a twisted sensibility escape without journalistic scrutiny.

And why is Maddox's ethnic background worthy of creating a sanctuary for him in a country noted for genocide within the last generation? Had the child been abandoned in a less PC and less exotic environment, like Appalachia, would Jolie be setting up a compound in the hills of West Virginia so Maddox could be close to his moonshine-distilling people?

It might be safer. "They've removed 48 unexploded land mines so far," Jolie divulged to People magazine. "I'm sure some people will question why I'm bringing my son into an area with land mines.

"When I looked around, I saw other families and thought, 'Why shouldn't I? I'm happy there.'" And, really, who wouldn't be happy waking up to a panoramic view of "The Killing Fields"? Hopefully, what remains of the Khmer Rouge has grown more open-minded to the role of the artist in society, and will leave the naive new neighbors in peace.

Designer C-sections

Liz Hurley sure knew how to start her son Damian's life off on a demonic note. First, she got impregnated by film producer Steven Bing (whose credits include, naturally, the film "Why Men Shouldn't Marry"), a man who didn't want to have a child with the actress in the first place (though he's subsequently offered child support). According to at least one British tabloid, even private dick to the stars Anthony Pellicano publicly questioned Hurley's claims of paternity on Bing's behalf. Bing, a close pal of Bill Clinton, appropriately, would have been more subtle yelling, "Slut!" in a crowded theater.

Second, Hurley had the controversial C-section. For some celebrities – it is unclear whether Hurley fits in this category – it's a fatuous vanity procedure having questionable medical benefits. In the past, the surgical procedure was relegated to medical emergencies, yet it is now being scheduled a week or two in advance of more than a few self-absorbed stars' scheduled delivery as a means to avoid stretch marks and other post-natal aesthetic inconveniences. In the case of Hurley, Mike Myer's costar in the first "Austin Powers" flick, she reportedly had her incision made below her "bikini line."

Yeah, baby!

"She scheduled the tummy tuck right after the C-section," Knight- Ridder Newspapers reported, citing "inside sources." Hurley showed up less than two months after her delivery at a charity function wearing a show-stopping skintight gown, a coming-out ritual now customary for postpartum sex symbols showing they still have it.

Obsessed with her postnatal physique, Hurley told the British media, "I have killed myself to try and shed the pounds – all 53 of them."

The elective C-section, as it is clinically known, is clear evidence of the self-obsessed behavior exhibited by some celebrity mothers finding new ways to push the narcissistic envelope. Someone should deliver the heartbreaking news to these vain expectant mothers that most doctors agree by that time the damage is already done.

"The abdomen is already stretched out by that time," Boston doctor Sharon Margulies said in an investigation into the trend by NBC's San Francisco affiliate KNTV. "It isn't safe to do an elective C-section. If you could avoid perhaps the last three months, that would make a difference, but obviously that wouldn't be safe for the baby."

Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham, Zoe Ball, Melanie Blatt, and Catherine Zeta-Jones also had C-sections. Are they UK tarts on the vanguard of a transatlantic trend, or are they simply statistical anomalies who actually required the procedure?

Incidentally, while eight months pregnant with her second child, Mrs. Michael Douglas performed a strenuous song and dance number from the hit musical "Chicago" at the 2003 Oscars, as an ambulance waited outside in case her water broke during a particularly high note or difficult move. Anglophile Madonna scheduled her C-section based upon her reading of the Kabbalistic calendar. Oy gevalt!

"Mother's love" is supposed to be the definitive example of selfless love, but celebrity women now bastardize that notion. In Hollywood, mother's love refers to the mother's love of herself, and their postpartum hard bodies, in particular. Thankfully, some are willing to criticize the idiotic behavior. "If they are willing to have children," one mother told NBC, "they should go the 40 weeks, or however long, without worrying about their image."

If only America had Fleet Street where Victoria Beckham's designer C-section was met bluntly with the scornful populist headline: "TOO POSH TO PUSH."

Sarah Jessica Parker, Cindy Crawford, and Hurley are cited as adherents of Pilates and yoga as a means to get their tummies back to award show-acceptable size. Parker was seen flaunting her washboard waistline and wearing a black corset top at the Golden Globes two months after giving birth to her first kid, James.

"The supermom syndrome has expanded from working and having kids, to working and having kids and having a body like this," Dr. Jan Christilaw, a Vancouver-based OB-GYN and in charge of the specialized women's health at British Columbia Women's Hospital told the National Post. "It is not attainable in most women's lives – nor should it be." But incredibly, influential female role models in Hollywood, with their priorities up their increasingly tighter derrieres, are sending out the message that it is.

My kid's mom: Passing the parental buck

Cultural elites and the suburban mother are at war, and populist bullets fly daily on the Dr. Laura Schlessinger radio show. The show's slogan, parroted by many female callers, "I'm my kid's mom," is an affirmation of stay-at-home motherhood, and a not-so-subtle attack on the feminist movement's promotion of nannies and day care over primary mommy care.

In Hollywood, however, there is no debate. The nanny is not only a foregone conclusion, but a central parental status symbol, along with sending the kids to the right trendy school and creating "play dates" with the right trendy kids of other celebrities and industry moguls. Many celebrity parents employ multiple nannies to oversee the daily grind, often on a one-to-one basis, or one better. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman (1990–2001) employed one nanny for each kid and a full-time nurse.

Demi Moore and Bruce Willis employed four nannies for their three children, Rumer, Scout, and Tallulah. One, Kim Tannahill, took the couple to court claiming the couple "shamelessly exploited and abused (her), through fraud, deceit, oppression, intimidation, threats and force." Tannahill lost the case, but even if the charges weren't true, for three years Moore and Willis entrusted the lives of their daughters to a woman who they claimed, in their own court filings, was "... a dishonest and disloyal employee who, among other things, misappropriated moneys ... improperly billed personal expenses to plaintiffs' accounts, failed to follow instructions and, on occasion, improperly performed her duties in dealing with the children."

Apparently mishandling the children as a celebrity nanny isn't sufficient grounds for firing, but woe to the Hollywood hired help who "work and tell," violating nondisclosure clauses by revealing private details of their employers' twisted lives and value systems.

A modest proposal

It is a melancholy object to those who witness an industry filled with rich and famous people possessing no hint of common sense and exhibiting pathological parenting behavior.

It may sound harsh, like no-smoking laws at bars, or requiring catalytic converters to cut down on vehicle emissions, or China's one-child policy, but in time people will realize it is for the greater good: Celebrities should not be allowed to have children. Period. Women entering Hollywood and getting the all-important Screen Actors Guild card should immediately have the controversial Norplant birth control device implanted in their upper arm. Men should be given vasectomies. Both procedures are reversible, and upon giving up their glamorous pursuits, for whatever reason, they should then be granted full reproductive options.

Nor should celebrities be allowed to adopt – whether through private attorneys, trips to Third World nations, or utilizing in-vitro surrogate wombs for rent. The celebrity family tree should be contained until a generation of self-obsessed and self-indulgent overgrown toddlers learns to live within the liberal parameters of what constitutes an emotionally healthy life, and proves they can exhibit rational behavior for a prolonged period of time. We'll let the electorate decide when that time comes.

This is not just to protect kids from celebrities, and celebrities from themselves. This is about stopping the most prominent role models in the world from hastening the demise of Western civilization. Celebrities simply can't perform in the role of parenthood.

The law for those celebrities who now have children, like Madonna, will be grandfathered. Lourdes and Rocco are spared – for now. But child protective services should be on her and Guy Ritchie or whomever and they should be on an especially short leash, just like other suspect classes. Angelina and Maddox Jolie of Phnom Penh by way of Malibu may have to lay low in the Mekong Delta until the coast is clear.

We profess, in the sincerity of our heart, that we have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of our country.

Read Excerpt 1: "Hollywood's family values"

Read Excerpt 2: "How the media enable celebrity wackiness"

Read Excerpt 3: "Trashing Middle America"

Get your copy of "Hollywood, Interrupted" at ShopNetDaily.