What's so wrong with Madonna and child?

Why all the fuss about one superstar adopting one almost-orphan?

You’d think Madonna had knocked over a liquor store, for all the hate being thrown her way for adopting David Banda from a Malawi orphanage. But all the pop star really did was travel to the African country on a charity mission to spread cash around for the suffering nation, pledge some more help (most likely of the Kabbalah sort) and then decide to take home a baby. Well, one of her assistants took the kid home, but still, she authorized the purchase. Most tourists just buy t-shirts. Celebrities, however, have more flesh-and-blood needs.

And while it all seemed cool at first, these things always get weird when super-rich people connected to fringe spiritual movements are involved. Accusations of culty proselytizing, press-whoring and kidnapping began to fly. The Malawi government broke its own adoption rules but they say there’s been no wrongdoing; the infant’s father, Yohane Banda, who’d given up his son to the group home, then claimed he was manipulated into signing adoption papers. And Madonna didn’t exactly go about this in anything resembling a quiet manner. That’s because she’s The Disco Mussolini and needs to conquer things to feel alive.

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But let’s assume that this will all die down and that money — lots and lots of dollars and euros — will smooth out the colonialist wrinkles and that little David Banda Glitter Ball Ciccone-Ritchie will eventually come to grow up in a cold, rainy country where people eat baked beans on toast for breakfast, with an aging hipster mother in an H&M tracksuit. Consider the upside.

He will get to live: This isn’t always a given in countries where poverty isn’t just for some, but for everyone. He will not die of a horrible yet preventable childhood illness. He will not be malnourished. He will have a pediatrician on call 24/7. That pediatrician will most likely live in an annex to the mansion, stethoscope always neck-ready to remind the rest of the staff of his or her function.

He just won the lottery: Yes, being raised swimming in extreme privilege — the best schools, nannies, clothes and vacations, not to mention a slew of interestingly-cracked celebrity friends of the family — can be just as damaging as being raised without it. But guess what? Your therapy bills are taken care of when you’re rich. You don’t starve while you’re trying to sort out your unhappiness. You get to wear Burberry and your blankets are cashmere. You have a driver. These sorts of things really make a difference.

He’ll have a cool British accent: Between his new father’s real one and his new mother’s eagerly-assimilated one, he’s going to sound like Hugh Grant soon enough. And everyone likes Hugh Grant.

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