SO, MERCY, WE WISH YOU A GREAT NEW LIFE WITH YOUR GENEROUS NEW MOTHER.

These words are offensive and bigoted! … Thank you, Liz Smith for reminding this child and us that she should be eternally grateful and not forget that some kind hearted generous white lady saved her for an impoverished life.

You can kneel by yourself at the "Shrine of Madonna" this is one person who will not !!!!

I can just imagine this as a scene in "Gone With The Wind."

 Lordy …Lordy thank you,  Miss Madonna for giving this poor Black child a home! … You’re a real generous white lady!  This child will surely be beholding to you forever for your generousity!

This is reminiscent of SLAVERY ! …  Babies torn away from their mothers breasts and sold off into SLAVERY never to  be seen again! Whites have a history of buying Blacks! … We are  now being commanded to treat Madonna as though she were Mother Theresa? 

Madonna as savior  Hell Bent on saving little Black chidren of the world. Great publicity and photo opts Madonna. You’re bound to get nominated for a Noble Peace Prize when all is said and done.

After Madonna’s first refusal by the child’s government, I felt like it was a massive temper tantrum being played out, followed by this singular determination to throw around power and money to win.  In other words, it wasn’t about the child at all, but more about control. Madonna is not a woman that likes to be thwarted, and apparently these behaviors go back into her childhood. If you cut through the arrogance and the accent and all of the other actions she engages in, she is still stomping her foot and bringing everything to a halt until she gets her way.  I concede that is just my opinion, but I know many share it.  Madonna did not adopt quietly, as the headline suggests.  People have been slamming her for weeks about her FedExed child.  Which ties in neatly to your end quote about how some people will do anything to remain in the public eye. Yes, they will.  Won’t they?

Of more interest to me:  I am sorry to hear that Mike Wallace, Walter Conkite and Don Hewitt are not in good health, and I wish all three the best. I was reading a book of essays the other day that Edward R. Murrow had put together, and it made me pause and think how they don’t make them like that anymore, but I don’t think that’s quite true.  I think those men and women still exist. It’s the nature of news reporting that has changed. Gawd.  I sound like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Laughing.

I totally agree with you on Dominick Dunne. A friend had already told me about the DVD. (I hedge to say this, but she read about it in The New York Post.)   I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I wrote to Mr. Dunne with some background information I had stumbled on about a case with a similar background during the O.J. Simpson case, and I brought this to his attention.  As busy as he was at that time, he wrote me back using a fountain pen on this most beautiful note card and it was obviously not a pat response.  I thought "That is a man who knows how to do things properly."  My friends and I miss him in the monthly issues of Vanity Fair.  I hope he will soon be returning.

As for that party in England, does anyone believe those people mentioned would show up on their own dime?  I think not.  And Salvador Dali?  After Helmut Newton took those photographs of a much aged Dali with oxygen tubes trailing from his nose, and a lot of bad behavior behind those eyes, I can well understand his foundation wanting to secure a more historically kind memory.  Unfortunately, the man left a lot more bad to be remembered than can be contained.

Well, Mercy - whose young mother died in childbirth - certainly has lost out, hasn’t she?  Snatched from the loving arms of her father, who never acknowledged her existence until he heard that she might be adopted.  And from her grandmother, who put her in the orphanage rather than raising her in a loving home.  She could have grown up in a country where most women are illiterate or semi-literate; where infant and maternal mortaility are high and AIDS is epidemic; child brides and child labor are common; where she would have had little access to basic medical care; where she would have to walk, on average, an hour a day to gather firewood, lugging it home on her head; where she would likely spend four times as many hours as her male counterparts working in the fields, and still have to manage her household and child-rearing — if she survived childbirth — and where, incidentally, she would have no real property rights.  Wow.  To have to give up all that.

No, people can rant about Madonna all they like - I don’t care for her style either - but I would MUCH rather have Madonna for my mother than grow up as an orphaned girl anywhere in Africa.  I don’t see that Lourdes, Rocco, or David are turning out so badly.

This little girl escaped a life that holds nothing but the daily grind of trying to survive.  I know nothing of Madonna’s motherhood abilities, but her wealth will provide nicely for her children. Good food, nannies, vacations, private schools, etc.

What irks me is that there are many single women in the USA who would be wonderful moms, but it’s much too costly to adopt, the process is painstakingly lengthy, and there is still small chance  that a single woman or man would be selected for parenthood .  But when there is wealth involved or stardom ( Sarah Jessica Parker now has twins born to a surrogate), parenthood is easily attained here or abroad.  So, we will continue to have children shuttled through foster care only to " age out" at age 18.. with nowhere to go.  

Sad and sick!

Thank you Lila, and isn’t Mercy David’s sister ? I think I read that she saw her as a baby when she adopted David and has been trying to adopt her since.

Children need a loving parent, whether it is a rich pop singer or a gay couple .. love is love and beats an orphanage any day. 

If motherhood is humanizing, I would think the same could be said for fatherhood. There have been and will always be really bad mothers just as there have been and will always be rotten fathers. From what I know about Madonna she does not fit these negative categories. I don’t know the details of this adoption case, but it looks as though one little girl will have a cared for life. And in the end it’s Madonna’s business.

Frederico Garcia Lorca, Spain’s most renowned poet and dramatist, once had a turbulent love  affair with Salvador Dali. Dali’s exploits seem to be legendary ––too bad about the film being in cold storage. 

Read this morning a comment by Joan Rivers while talking to a reporter about the death of Ed McMan; called Johnny Carson a bastard and a nasty man. Wasn’t there a wonderful song in the twenties entitled, "Oh, that Nasty Man" but done with tongue in cheek–-so to speak? 

I shudder at your subtle racism Liz Smith.  Why do people have this colonialist attitude toward Africa ?  Why is taking a child away from all natural connections of birth a good thing simply because the taker is affluent ?  Does anyone remember Joan Crawford ?  No one thought ill of Joan till daughter Christiana, all grown up and fully damaged, spoke up.  Would poverty have scarred them more than Joan herself did ?  Liz has, and continues to have, a deep crush on Madonna, and is possibly racist to boot.  Are nannies, and footmen, and streams of lovers, and people coming and going better than a grandmother down a dirt poor road who is constant and a connection to her roots ?  Why not just write a check and have done ?