Oct 27
'06
Video of Madonna on Oprah
'06
This is probably going to be my last post today as I am incredibly sick and need to rest.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Britney is stressed on X Factor
John Travolta: secret cross dresser
Kristen Stewart's performance slammed
Nicole Kidman at "The Paperboy" premiere
This is probably going to be my last post today as I am incredibly sick and need to rest.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
You’ve undoubtedly heard already that Madonna went on Oprah yesterday to defend her controversial adoption. She never bothers to defend the other controversial things she does, but now that an infant is involved she must realize that her earning status is threatened by this PR fiasco.
I have not seen clips from the show yet, and am waiting until they hit YouTube, but she makes somewhat of a point by saying that the press is putting words in the half-orphan’s father’s mouth, and that he’s being manipulated into saying he didn’t understand the adoption. He did clarify that he doesn’t want Davie to come back, but that he didn’t really understand that adoption means legally signing his child away. That makes sense to me, and I think he’s just explaining that it was fast-tracked and that he wasn’t told the full truth.
In Madonna’s statements on Oprah yesterday, she said that David was suffering from pneumonia when she picked him up and that she whisked him off to a clinic to get him an antibiotic shot and treatment. She mentioned that she had David and several other orphans tested for HIV and other medical conditions. Does this mean that she only gave the go-ahead for the adoption after she learned his HIV status?
Why did she test all of the children unless she was going to select one based on their medical status? If she just wanted Davie and fell in love with him after seeing his picture as she claims, wouldn’t she have only had him tested? Did she give medical treatment to any of the other orphans based on the pediatrician’s findings, or does she think that a glass of Kabbalah water will cure them?
She also said that none of David’s extended family had visited him at the orphanage during his entire stay there. At first this sounds like it contradicts Yohane Banda’s statements that he regularly biked the 25 mile round trip to see his son and play with him. Notice she used the word “extended,” though, and that David’s father is immediate, not extended, family. She is trying to justify snatching David by saying that no one else visited him apart from his father.
Madonna is justifying her usual outlandish behavior, and said that there were no laws that she flouted by taking the child out of the country. There were definitely laws that she was required to stay in Malawi for 18 months in order to adopt a child, and at the very least she is bending the truth by claiming there weren’t.
She said she couldn’t understand why people are outraged at her adoption and that she didn’t want to discourage other people from trying to adopt. She also admitted that she doesn’t read newspapers or watch television. That’s ridiculous, and shows how proud she is of her haughty ignorance. She routinely bashes Bush and Christianity. I guess her opinions are based on how she feels about things, and not facts or current information. (I hate Bush too, and he also admits to never reading a newspaper, but Madonna is just as bad if she attempts to influence the public but can’t be bothered to try and keep up with current events.)
Madonna tried to do damage control on Oprah yesterday, and it was partially successful. Audience members note that she seemed upset and tried to maintain composure. Her statements seem snotty and defensive to me, though, and by admitting that she doesn’t understand the controversy and that there were no laws barring her behavior, she makes it clear how she could flout adoption regulations and snag an infant with a father without batting an eye.
Pictures from Oprah.com and Just Jared.
In a sad but predictable twist to the Maddona half-orphan adoption saga, the father of the baby Madonna whisked off to London claims he was misinformed about Madonna’s intentions with his 13 month-old boy. He was never given a copy of the papers singing over his child to the aging pop star, and was unable to understand them anyway as he does not speak or understand English. Representatives told him that Madonna was just looking after his boy and that he would return to help him on his farm, not that she would be taking permanent guardianship.
Yohane Banda says he was misled and never would have agreed to outright adoption:
“It would have been better for him to continue staying at the orphanage because I see no reason why my child should be given away forever when I can feed him,” he said, speaking at his village of Lipunga near the Zambia border late on Saturday.
Madonna, 48, has angered rights groups with her plan to adopt young David Banda, who left his native country on Tuesday last week for the entertainer’s home in London after she was granted temporary adoption rights by Malawi authorities.
The High Court in Lilongwe will on Friday start hearing the case lodged by the Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC), an alliance of 67 human rights groups, which argues current Malawi laws forbid international adoption, even by celebrities.
Banda told Reuters he signed papers he could not understand, but government officials assured him that the agreement was similar to what he had with the orphanage — to nurture and educate the boy but not take him away for good.
“I cannot read and write so I relied on what the (government) officials told me that the papers said Madonna would look after the child the way the orphanage planned to educate him and then he comes back to me,” Banda said.
Asked if he had any copies of the agreements he signed with Madonna, Banda said: “I am still waiting to get my copies.”
He said the copies were still in the hands of the government officials who mediated the agreement. Banda said he would wait to see them before deciding what action to take after consultations with his mother and other family members.
This is somewhat of a departure from Banda’s earlier statements that he gave Madonna his blessing to look after his boy. It now seems that he thought Madonna was caring for the boy on his behalf, not that she would become his legal mother.
67 human rights groups are disputing Madonna’s adoption claim, saying that her fast-track adoption of the baby flouted the laws of Malawi and could result in human trafficking in the poor African nation. There will be a hearing to challenge Madonna’s adoption on October 27th.
Madonna will appear on Oprah to do PR damage control for her high-profile adoption this Wednesday. I would like to see some of the people in the audience boo her, but I know that’s not going to happen.
The guy responsible for introducing grieving Paul McCartney to acerbic activist Heather Mills cannot believe the bullshit she’s claiming against the beloved rocker in the leaked divorce papers. He says he’s really sorry for even bringing them together in the first place, and that Heather is an opportunistic liar:
But Heather quickly began attracting unfavourable headlines. Her past, to put it mildly, was ‘murky’. She’d been a party girl for wealthy Arabs, had run through boyfriends and fiancés like a bull through Pamplona, and developed an unfortunate tendency to tell endless porky pies about herself.
She was also a fiery little number, prone to rages, rows and general ‘anger management’ issues.
Stories soon emerged that the marriage was in trouble – at one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone.
It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang ‘We Can Work It Out’ into the answerphone.
But despite it all, I still rather liked and admired Heather. When I interviewed her for a TV series, I found her to be a tough cookie with a waspish sense of humour, who was rightly proud of the very effective work she does for charity.
But I also didn’t believe a lot of what she said, and thought she was ludicrously obsessed with – and touchy about – the Press. I could also sense a growing – and even more ludicrous – irritation that she had to constantly play second fiddle to Paul…
The separation, when it came, only served to confirm what many already suspected: there had been three of them in the marriage – Paul, Heather and her Ego, and one of them had to go. It was Paul…
We all love Macca because he’s always seemed such a nice, ordinary type, relatively untainted by fame. And that’s why Heather has made such a hideous mistake in making all these horrible allegations about her husband in the divorce papers.
Even if she was not directly responsible for the leak, she must have known that the details would come out, and presumably assumed we’d all read them with horror and a sudden new sympathy for this poor, tortured, tormented soul.
But we didn’t, Heather. We all read them with horror alright – horror that you could be so disgusting about our Paul. As for sympathy, that’s all going to swing even further his way. Fast.
Any sympathy I once had for Miss Mills has evaporated. Instead, I am filled with guilt and sorrow that, as a lifelong Beatles fan, I am at least partly responsible for the hell Paul McCartney is going through at the hands of this vengeful, shameless, ghastly woman.
Paul, it may be a bit late now, but I’m sorry.
[via Lainey's Gossip]
That’s precious. Heather Mills is making shit up about Paul and it’s only making her look bad. I hope lots more comes out in the divorce details.
This woman was a hooker and a porn model before she rose to fame after losing her leg in an accident. She landed the head Beatle, and she couldn’t stand sharing the spotlight with him. Now she won’t have to, because the press is going to be looking at her with intense scrutiny now, and all the bugs she has under the carpet are going to come scurrying out.
Madonna’s human cargo may have arrived early in the morning on 10/17, but she had plenty of time to take off to go to pilates class that day. She couldn’t be bothered to hire a trainer to come over to her place so that she could avoid the publicity of going out to the gym. She could have even popped in an exercise DVD or ran on one of the many treadmills scattered throughout her mansion. Instead she had to follow her workout routine and give the paps more fugly pictures to print. What a great mom she’s going to make.
(In case you haven’t noticed, I enjoy stirring up controversy. Obviously I don’t like Madonna, but whether I personally vilify her or not for handing off her precious half-orphan to a nanny so she can go to the gym on his first day in London is up to debate.)
Madonna has published a letter claiming that she started the adoption process “months” before she traveled to Malawi and picked her non-orphan son-to-be out of a baby lineup:
Nevertheless, we have gone about the adoption procedure according to the law like anyone else who adopts a child. Reports to the contrary are totally inaccurate. The procedure includes an 18 month evaluation period after which time we hope to make this adoption permanent. This was not a decision or commitment that my family or I take lightly.
I am overwhelmed and inspired by my trip to Malawi and hope that it helps bring attention to how much more the world needs to do to help the children of Africa.
My heartfelt thanks for all the good wishes I have received and I hope the press will allow my family some room for us to experience the joy we feel to have David home.
If this is true, why did the orphanage representative say that Madonna selected David Banda out of 12 children that were hand picked for her? When you want to adopt a baby, don’t you have to have a specific one in mind first before you file the paperwork? It could be partially true that Madonna started the process way ahead of her trip, in that she asked for pictures and baby profiles to be e-mailed to her. I don’t believe her for a second and think that the only process she started was one that would help her select a child, not adopt a specific one.
Madonna is full of shit as usual. She’s getting an “18 month evaluation period,” but she doesn’t have to stay in Malawi like every other prospective parent. She also didn’t decide she wanted to adopt little David until she saw him and selected him.
Every year at Christmas my mom donates money to Heifer International, through which you can give a cow, goats, or chickens to a needy family in the third world. Donations go beyond mere charity to help people become self-sufficient. I saw a special on Oprah a while ago featuring Susan Sarandon and Goldie Hawn in which a young African woman and her mother came on to tell everyone how much their lives had changed after they were given some livestock through Heifer.
All Madonna had to do to “help one child escape an extreme life of hardship, poverty and in many cases death” as she put it, was to give Yohane Banda some goats or a cow. Instead that evil bitch snatched his only child, and is trying to justify it by saying that the family is too poor to keep him. She’s too immoral to set aside her desire for a specific baby for the good of the child and his long-suffering family.
The story of little David Banda really breaks my heart. I was trying hard to be objective and not judge Madonna for whisking this little baby away when she could have easily made it possible for his family to raise him, but after after reading statements from his father, a hardworking simple farmer, I realized how selfish this really is. I honestly got a lump in my throat:
“They said she wanted to adopt and take him to America. They said that she would give him a better life.
“At first I wasn’t very sure. I asked if it meant that I would never see him again.
“They said I would be sent pictures and when David was older he would be able to visit the village.”
“My family and I agreed that this was a very good opportunity for David to get an education and grow up healthy.
“There were some minor disagreements about his Malawian culture but we said yes.”
Yohane had never heard of Madonna, or her raunchy songs. He was told only that she was “a very nice Christian lady“.
“I am a single man with no experience of these things. My in-laws, who live in Zambia, did not want him and my extended family is too poor to take him in.
“I was scared he would die like my other children so I took him where he could be looked after properly. I felt very sore in my heart, but I could think of no other way.
“He was one month and seven days old. The orphanage made me sign a letter to show that I was handing him over to their charge, but I suppose deep in my heart I always imagined that when he was better, or I had got another wife, I would go and take him back. I did not think anyone would want to take him away.
“But I was persuaded by Rev Chipeta. He said that I was to hold fast and not waver in my decision.
“He said many people would come to the village and tell me things but that I should go ahead and let the woman have my son – that it was the best thing for David’s future…”
Meanwhile Yohane still struggles to come to terms with what he has done. He says he has received no money in connection with the adoption of his child, but there is a sense that this committed Christian, who sang with his late wife in the local church choir, has a niggling suspicion that what has happened is not right.
Certainly he has never behaved like a man who willingly abandoned his son.
For the past nine months he has visited his son whenever he could – regularly cycling the 25 miles from his home in the village to the orphanage along treacherous dirt and stone tracks more suited to rugged four wheel drive vehicles.
He said: “I would bring him food from my garden, then sit and play with him for a while. I wanted him to know that I was his father, that I love him very much.
“He is my only child still living and I think of him as a gift from God. He is also the best memory I have left of my wife.”
This man is a committed Christian. How do you think he’s going to feel when he sees pictures from Madonna’s stupid shocking “Sex” book or when someone shows him a Madonna video? Madonna is freaking Jewish, for God’s sake, and she follows an illegitimate offshoot of Judiasm known for being a harmful cult.
Last night while I was at the gym the “Human Nature” video was playing on one of the TVs. I was working out watching it, thinking, “This is the reason why people hate Madonna. This song sucks and the video is lame.”
Commentors on Gossip Rocks note that Oprah helps whole villages and that Madonna could have easily done the same for the Banda’s village, too. Instead she scooped up Yohane Banda’s only child in exchange for building orphanages that will work to indoctrinate vulnerable children into her cult religion.
Madonna actually left Malawi without David, and waited a few days for the paperwork to come through so he could be shipped to her. He flew out on a private jet with a nanny and some bodyguards.
Malawian human rights groups oppose the adoption, and it is thought that Madonna was quick to remove David from the country so that she could avoid a long legal battle for custody. The aging pop star must also apply for adoption rights in England.
Let’s see what kind of stupid Kabbalah name Madonna gives this child. She’s too stubborn to listen to public opinion and do what’s best for the boy. This will ruin her public image for good.
I am pretty liberal, but even I think this is dumb.
Barbra Streisand pissed everyone off at her recent NY concert by making them sit through a boring skit and duet she did with a Bush lookalike. When hecklers told her what they thought about paying big bucks to hear her sing and being forced to watch a contrived dialogue, she lost her cool and told them to f&$@ off:
“Come on, be polite!” the well-known liberal implored during the sketch as she and “Bush” exchanged zingers. But one heckler wouldn’t let up. And finally, Streisand let him have it.
“Shut the (expletive) up!” Streisand bellowed, drawing wild applause. “Shut up if you can’t take a joke!”
Here’s a quick video of Barbra’s appearance with the Bush lookalike. The Bush guy says “I’ve got an iPod at home, it just says ‘Babs’” Uh, yeah, that’s really hip of you Barbra. This is just a clip and does not include Babs getting pissed off or talking at length with the guy, but there are chairs on the stage so they probably settled in afterwards for a thrilling heart to heart.
In contrast, I heard that Bruce Springsteen just used some quick sound bites of Bush talking about WMDs like he was psychic to justify the war. Madonna got heat for showing some visuals comparing Bush with Hitler, but at least she didn’t waste concert-goers time with a skit. And of course George Michael pulled out a giant blow up doll of Bush getting blown by an English Bulldog to mixed results.
There are cooler, more subtle ways to make your political opinions known, but Babs is just old and unaware of how to pull it off without looking like an idiot.
I couldn’t find the “f&$@ off” video on iFilm or YouTube yet. Once it hits the video sharing sites I’ll post it here.
Update: The guy who heckled Babs at her show may have been a “right wing plant,” but I still think it was dumb of her to respond and to do that played-out skit in the first place.
Thanks to the excellent snarky blog Rhymes with Snitch for this story I haven’t seen anywhere else. The night Paris Hilton flashed her ass in a too-short dress while dancing on a table at Janet Jackson’s birthday party at Tao (despite the fact that she claims to never dance on tables and there are even more recent pictures to the contrary,) she decided to serenade everyone at 3 AM with a drunken “Stars are Blind.”
Janet was understandably outraged and got the hell out of there immediately, taking 30 of her friends with her:
People are saying Janet Jackson stormed out of TAO en masse, with her 30-strong entourage, including Jermaine Dupri, split-seconds after Paris Hilton began singing her ‘Stars are Blind’ single — peppering her intro with several 4-letter adjectives of the ”love” word for the TAO crowd. The party was a salute to Janet’s new CD and guests wondered why Paris was given the house mic to talk and sing-along to her own record at 3AM
Paris, sit yo ass down.
Paris often sings her own songs badly while wasted out at clubs, and she probably had no clue that she was doing anything wrong by warbling at an established pop artist’s joint birthday party and CD celebration.
Despite news that Janet Jackson’s new album is relatively tanking on the charts and may help sink her boyfriend Jermaine Dupri’s career at Virgin Records, she shopped for a $30 million dollar apartment in Manhattan last week, and claimed that Jermaine needed a huge closet because he has more shoes than she does.
Meanwhile Paris is still considered a scourge on the entertainment industry. Meatloaf has joined Jenny McCarthy in claiming that he plans to haunt Paris Hilton after he dies. And predictably, Paris was voted the top overexposed celebrity that people want to see less of. With that news, here are absolutely no pictures of Paris.
A picture of Angelina Jolie playing murdered journalist Daniel Pearl’s wife in “A Mighty Heart” has come out. Seeing her in character makes it all the more obvious why African-American groups decried the casting of a caucasian actress in the role of a woman who is half Cuban and appears biracial. Angelina’s skin has been darkened for the role and she looks nothing like herself.
Mariane Pearl was “delighted” that Angelina was picked to play her, but many people are not pleased:
Pearl is the tan, biracial widow of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, whose memoir, “A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl,” will be adapted into a motion picture by Brad Pitt’s production company.
Since the news came out a few weeks ago, message boards across the Internet have been on fire, expressing harsh criticism about Jolie playing the role of Pearl. On BET.com’s own boards, user chantejoy calls the very idea a “new generation of Hollywood in blackface.”
In case you were wondering how Angelina landed the part of a biracial woman, you need look no further than Brad Pitt. He’s a producer of the film and made sure to hire her in the lead role.
I’m not touching this one, but it’s easy to make the decision to report on it since Brangelina is getting on my last nerve lately.
Update: This is contentious topic. Check out the discussion thread on Concrete Loop for more opinions. Most of the people who commented are kind of neutral about it.
Picture from Empire Online via JJB.
