There’s this cute story about how Madonna is taking her new little half-orphan 13 month-old David to visit Gwyneth Paltrow’s 9 month-old son, Moses. Stella McCartney’s 19 month-old son, Miller, and Kate Winslet’s three year-old boy, Joe, are also said to have joined them a few times:

Madonna’s adopted son has been enjoying play dates with Gwyneth Paltrow’s baby boy Moses.

The ‘Hung Up’ singer has been taking 13-month-old David - who she gained interim custody of on October 12 - to the ‘Shakespeare In Love’ actress’North London home so the two tots can get to know each other.

A source close to the pop superstar is quoted by Britain’s The Sun newspaper as saying: “Madonna was keen for David to get friends his own age group.”

The two famous babies have also been joined by fashion designer Stella McCartney’s 19-month-old son Miller and actress Kate Winslet’s three-year-old boy Joe on several occasions.

This sounds really cute and all, but I don’t know if I believe that all these famous babies got together. I mean, where are the pictures of the mommies outside their homes? We see Madonna and Gwyneth’s every gym visit, wouldn’t this be bigger news if they were visiting each other with their babies?

Maybe it’s true that Madonna and Gwyneth had a few glasses of wine and talked about their vacation plans in those fake British accent while the nannies watched their babies, but I’m not sure that Kate Winslet and Stella McCartney came along and dropped off ther tots too.

Now Madonna has revealed what everyone suspected after she bought a ton of designer girl’s clothes - she wants a half-orphan daughter, too. This sounds like a made-up quote to me, but it could be true. Maddona supposedly told French magazine Paris Match that she wants to snatch a Malawian baby girl quickly to “redress the balance” in her family or some such shit. It sounds like she can’t stand the fact that Britney got divorced and her name is no longer in the papers this week:

Asked in an interview if she wanted another child the 48-year-old answered: “Yes, absolutely. I’m going to adopt another Malawian child very quickly. A baby girl this time, in order to redress the balance”.

The 48-year-old said that Lourdes and Rocco would be involved in the ‘choice’ of their new baby sister but she wanted them to have time to get used to 13-month-old David Banda - who Madonna is in the process of adopting - first.

She also refused to take responsibility for flouting the adoption laws in Malawai, which require prospective parents to stay in the country for a year and a half, by claiming that someone contacted her first about going to the impoverished nation. This sounds like more of the bullshit she usually spouts:

In the interview with Paris Match she said: “It was not me who chose Malawi, but it chose me. “A native of the country contacted me though my association, Spirituality for Kids which I publicise in all my shows.

“She helps a lot of orphans in Malawi and she told me about the childhood poverty, and the dreadful mortality rate.

“She asked me for help as my fame could help focus on the problems.

“I started my own inquiry and I said to myself: ‘They need help!”

She is surely helping the Malawians convert to Kabbalah, that’s for sure.

Pictures from I’m Not Obsessed and Daily Mail.

Madonna has upset the people who run the Malawian orphanage where she snatched little half-orphan Davie Banda by claiming that he had an “horrendous” diaper rash and was living in poor conditions. Officials there fear that Madonna’s snide remarks about the care they give their children could screw them out of the small donations they rely on to run the orphanage. They also say that Madonna is lying through her teeth, and that no one told her that the baby was not visited by his father. They also say that despite all the media attention they’re still working with a shoestring budget and that Madonna’s criticisms could really hurt the orphans that were left behind:

One of the orphanage’s founders has written to the BBC, protesting at the pop singer’s comments in an interview with Newsnight, which is to be broadcast in full for the first time this weekend.

The British charity which raises funds for Home of Hope orphanage in Malawi said it feared he remarks would lead to a drop off in donations.

In the letter to Newsnight, the charity’s secretary Rosemary Lowdon wrote: “We have been very disturbed that the Home of Hope appears to have been described as a place where children are not cared for properly.”

“We must stress that no money has come to the Home as a result of this adoption, and the financial resources at the Home are very limited.”

“We are desperately worried that people will cease donating as a result of Madonna’s comments, and that this will make a difference between life and death for some of the most vulnerable children at the Home.”

Mrs Lowdon, who helped set up the orphanage with her husband Martin in 1998 and who raised £20,000 to help run it last year, is in Malawi visiting the institution where David Banda, the 13-month-old baby Madonna has adopted, was cared for.

Mrs Lowdon took a copy of the abbreviated Newsnight interview to show to the Reverend Thomson Chipeta, the 77-year old Presbyterian minister who runs the orphanage.

“He was very shaken, he was very upset,” said Mrs Lowdon, 41.

“He said to me, ‘Why is she saying this?’”

Madonna has claimed David was in an appalling state when she first saw the toddler last month.

The boy, she claimed, was suffering “the most horrendous diaper rash I’ve ever seen.”

The singer, 48, who is adopting David with film director husband Guy Ritchie, also claimed she had been told by the Rev Chipeta that the boy was no longer visited by his father.

Kids get diaper rashes, and it’s often not anyone’s fault. Even the best cared-for babies can get thrush. Madonna is just a bitch.

Meanwhile Madonna called Gwen Stefani to tell her that Davie wouldn’t wear the L.A.M.B. baby clothes that Stefani thoughtfully sent her. Madonna is said to have told Gwen she doesn’t want to promote her clothing line and wouldn’t dress Davie in the clothes. Couldn’t she have just sent a thank you letter? People gave me some ugly clothes for my son and I just wrote thank you letters or took a picture of him in them and sent it. She didn’t have to get into a whole debate about it!

Madonna also supposedly called up Angelina Jolie all upset about the fact that her baby-snatching was such a focus of the media while Angelina got away scott free with Maddox and Zahara.

I don’t know if all that is true, but Madonna is surely a bitch for disparaging the orphanage that so gratefully opened their doors for her and let her take home Davie without going through proper channels. I hope that people help that orphanage out and that it’s not too distressing for them to have to deal with all the criticisms that Madonna heaps on them whenever she opens her mouth. Talk about an ungrateful bitch. Maybe if they all had red strings on their hands and gave the babies Kabbalah water instead of breastmilk Madonna would say what a great place it was.

Madonna had a bruise on her cheek after a supposed accident with a paparrazo. The people at Splash News suggest that Madonna is not telling the truth about the incident. Pictures from People.com and SplashNews.

Madonna looks composed as she tries to make her way through JFK airport with David Banda , 13-months on Saturday. They are returning home to London after a week in New York promoting her new concert special. Madonna is furious at the media for making her impending adoption of the boy “hell.”

“It was one f–ing thing after the next, everywhere we went. So the idea that people think I got a shortcut or an easy ride is absolutely ludicrous. I have never worked so hard for anything in my life, and I’ve never been given such a hard time. And my celebrity has worked against me in every way.”
“There’s a lot of Brits – reporters on the street – who’ve said, ‘Why don’t you adopt a kid from Britain?’ Or, ‘Why did you adopt a black child?’ So a lot of people’s hangups and ‘isms’ are sort of mixed into this, too. It’s just kind of a cocktail for disaster in terms of media perception.”
If you’re a famous person who’s trying to make a difference in the world, she adds, “you’d better be prepared to find yourself in the headquarters of hell.”

Source

Madonna says she could have gone all-out for charity like her nemesis, the younger, prettier more fertile Angelina Jolie, but instead she decided to just go to an impoverished nation for a couple of weeks, set up orphanage fronts for her cult religion and go home with a baby with a family. That way, she could maximize her publicity potential instead of wasting all that time like Angelina does:

In the interview [in Time] on newsstands Monday, the reporter asked Madonna about the perception that she’s “jumping on a bandwagon” by adopting an African orphan. The singer replied, “Look, I could have joined the U.N. and become an ambassador and visited various countries and just kind of showed up and smiled and looked concerned. But that’s not getting to the root of the problem – and by the way, neither is building orphan care centers and giving people food and medicine.”

Hmmm…which U.N. ambassador who is famous for visiting various countries and building orphan centres could Madge possibly be referring to? As if we needed further proof that she was setting her sights on Jolie, Madonna added, “I’m not interested in going in there like a dilettante and being an idiot and going ‘Ok, I’m going to build 10 orphanages and I’ll see you guys later!’”

Me-ow! We sense a ‘my orphan is cuter than your orphan’ battle in the near future.

Madonna said on Oprah that she hadn’t even met Angelina when she was questioned about whether she was following Angelina’s adoption lead.

Angelina is currently visiting refugees in India and speaking with government officials instead of doing the exhaustive talk show circuit, which is like so more charitable, right Madonna? On Saturday Angelina visited refugee camps in Dehli and on Sunday she met with the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma in Hyderabad. Brad Pitt is currently in Los Angeles for the premiere of “Babel.”

Thanks to DListed for the Madonna story and some pictures and Mollygood for the high res versions of Angelina at the refugee camp.

I am so sick of Madonna. There’s a chance Madonna might not have adopted little Davie Banda for publicity, but she sure is milking it for all it’s worth. She went on Oprah already, so she should just stay in London, go see her colorist and continue to do Pilates while dressed in furry hoodies. Instead she came over to the states and is doing the talkshow circuit, bitching about how people care about her babysnatching when there are so many other problems in the world. If she really didn’t want people to pay attention, she shouldn’t have announced her visit to Malawi to the press and she should have stayed the fuck home in London instead of talking about it to everyone.

There’s this story that another woman wanted to adopt Davie, but it sounds like she just cared for him and it’s not completely clear in the article that she was going to adopt him. Yohan Banda claims she was going to adopt him, but the press puts words in his mouth and I’m not sure.

This other woman was a Canadian grandmother who stayed in Malawi near the orphanage for months at a time. She says that two other Canadian couples adopted babies from there and that it took freaking three years and a ton of stress before they were able take the infants home. Now that seems extreme and I think that it should be easier for people to adopt babies from third world countries - but not so easy that it takes less than a month!

Madonna now claims that she offered Yohane Banda the option to keep Davie and that she asked him if he wanted money. He says the first time he saw her was in court and that he was made to sign a bunch of paperwork right away. It sounds like Madonna is either lying through her gapped teeth or she’s embellishing an incident that was half-assed on her part and that the guy didn’t understand. “Can I give you some money…” “No, No.”

Yohane Banda has been interviewed from now till Sunday, and he hasn’t said anything about Madonna offering him money, so he probably didn’t understand it if she indeed gave him that option.

I am not an adoption expert, but I love my kid and I do my best to follow attachment parenting and to be there for him. Madonna had a nanny fetch David from Malawi and she went to Pilates on his first morning in London.

I would have included excerpts form the stories here, which I read while rolling my eyes and shaking my head this morning, but you can read it for yourself from the links above. The whole thing just annoys me. Maybe the kid will have a great life full of Jewish mysticism and The Wiggles, and his dad is surely making money by giving quotes to the press so maybe his life will turn out ok by extension, but Madonna needs to go away now. I don’t want to see or speak of her again. (But I will, you know I will.)

There’s a report that a South African woman was interested in adopting baby David Banda, and that she was coming back for him shortly and presumably intended to live in Malawi for a year and a half according to adoption regulations there. These laws help protect vulnerable babies from being snatched by rich pedophiles and fickle sensationalist pop stars. Madonna is even said to have been told that this other woman wanted to adopt Davie, but just like the fact that the boy had a father, that obviously didn’t deter her. Whatever Madonna wants, Madonna gets:

According to the administrator at the orphanage Lucy Chipeta, a South African national visited the orphanage a few months ago and expressed the desire to adopt David, whose mother died soon after delivery in September last year.

“I think David is a lucky boy,” Chipeta said at the weekend adding that Madonna was told about the matter but she insisted on taking David.

The South African was expected to visit the country again to start the adoption process. She will have to look for another orphan now that David is Madonna’s new baby pending finalisation of the adoption.

According to Chipeta, the orphanage presented to Madonna a set of orphans, some of them without both parents, but the pop diva fell for David although she was told about the impeding adoption by the South African.

David underwent an HIV test at a government hospital and was diagnosed negative. Madonna’s own medical team conducted another test and confirmed the earlier results.
“But even if he was found to be HIV positive, Madonna indicated she would still take him because all she wanted was to know his HIV status,” Chipeta said.

You can think, “Well, Madonna was there first, and who knows if this other person would have followed through with the adoption?” and that’s partially valid. When the other woman had to rearrange her entire life to adopt Davie because she needed to live in Malawi for 18 months first, is it any wonder she went home to get her affairs in order first?

Davie is reportedly doing well, and Madonna has outfitted his nursery with enough crap to make his family’s entire village self sufficient.

His father has said that he doesn’t want to take Davie back despite saying earlier that he didn’t really understand the fact that adoption is legally permanent. He also said that Madonna’s claim on Oprah that his wife and two other children died of aids is not true and is incredibly stigmatizing to his family.

Moreover, Yohane Banda says that he did visit David at the orphanage often and that his mother and brother went to see the baby too. Madonna claimed on Oprah that none of Davie’s “extended” family went to see him. It’s possible that officials told Madonna a bunch of lies about Davie’s family because they didn’t want to jeopardize her huge donation. Why would she use the word “extended” though unless she knew that the boy’s father had seen him at the orphanage?

People are saying that adoption laws need to be reformed so that other children can get a shitload of designer baby gear instead of a supported life in Africa, and maybe they have a point. The answer is not to let wealthy people donate orphanages and take home a baby in less than a month, though. There has to be some sort of compromise that protects children from predators while making sure that the people left behind get the support they so desperately need - without red strings attached.

The trolls are out in full force on these Madonna posts. If you don’t agree with me you’re welcome to give your opinion, which I respect. Most people who are on Madonna’s side explain it clearly and logically. (Thanks Elisha!) Attacking people personally for having a different opinion than you do is called an ad hominem attack and it’s the weakest argument there is. Calling someone fat instead of addressing their points is pretty unconvincing. It makes no sense.

Also, as long as something is making headlines I will cover it. (Mr. T) I do my best to listen to you and take your concerns seriously, but I have a job to do and if I ignore every story or celebrity that someone is sick of I’ll have nothing left to gossip about.

Madonna swooped into a third world country and took home a baby with a father after a couple of weeks. She managed to completely flout adoption laws by dropping a bunch of cash on a Kabbalah-themed orphanage. Who knew that would be so polarizing an issue?

This is probably going to be my last post today as I am incredibly sick and need to rest.

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There’s a report that Angelina wants to adopt an Indian baby that she plans on naming - get this - India. There were stories when Angelina was pregnant that she was going to have a boy and name him “Africa,” because that’s where she was at the time. Someone’s making up a story that Angelina plans to adopt a baby now, which isn’t much of a stretch considering that both she and Brad have admitted to wanting a soccer team full of kids.

Sources say the big-hearted actress and partner Brad Pitt have already applied to adopt a tot from an Indian orphanage. An insider said: “They hope to be able to bring the child home by Christmas.

“Brad would prefer a boy no older than 18 months to even out the sexes but Angie has told him she can’t guarantee she won’t fall in love with a little girl.”

The source told US magazine Globe: “Whichever they end up with, they’d like to name the child India to honour its homeland.” The pair are rumoured to have visited the Priva Darshini orphanage in the last month.

This is not true, because these two are stalked wherever they go and if they were at an orphanage we would have heard about it. I could be surprised, though, because I thought the story that they were going to leave Paris so that Angelina could give birth in Africa was total bullshit. I mean, who would believe that before it actually happened?

If Angelina does adopt an Indian baby then we can all move on from worrying about the plight of little Davie Banda-Ritchie. He’s sure to be a hellraiser in his teens, but he’ll be a snotty British emo kid instead of a disaffected indifferent American like Maddox, I mean India. (Or was that Africa? I forget.)

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.