There are few targets on earth easier than Madonna.
I should know, having sighted her in the crosshairs many times over the years. Not that I'm the only one. Between her affected accent, her acting failures, her opportunistic image du jour changeability, her naked self-promotion, her naked self-absorption and her occasional naked nakedness, Madonna has made Madonna-bashing a sport so popular it should be in the Olympics. Small wonder the recent story of Madonna and child has proven irresistible.
The child is David Banda, a toddler from Malawi the singer and her husband, director Guy Ritchie, want to adopt. The baby's mother is dead and he was being raised in an orphanage because his father, Yohane Banda, lacked the means to care for him.
All of which has some of us in a snit. A columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer called the proposed adoption "unseemly" and raised the specter of "cultural genocide," given that the child will grow up in a family where no one looks like him. A New York Post columnist called the singer "sluttish," "egomaniacal" and a "monster" for whom the 13-month-old baby is only an "African souvenir."
Others have suggested that, between Madonna and Angelina Jolie, the Third World toddler has become Hollywood's latest status symbol. Meanwhile, human rights advocates in Malawi have gone to court to block the adoption, accusing Madonna of using her wealth to bend the nation's adoption laws.
Moreover, there have been conflicting statements from Yohane Banda. First he said human rights groups should leave him and his child alone. Then he said he only wanted Madonna to raise the child for him, but that he didn't mean to give his son up permanently — as if the one did not require the other. Most recently, he said he hopes the criticism does not make Madonna back out of the adoption.
It is perhaps enough to point out that Yohane is an unsophisticated farmer trying to deal, probably through interpreters, with international news media.
Of course, there is one voice we haven't heard: David's. One suspects the baby, already a survivor of malaria and tuberculosis, might be a little scared, might miss the familiar. But one suspects that he also appreciates being clean, clothed, sheltered and well-fed. And that one day, he will appreciate even more the fact that he is educated and — no small miracle — alive. That trumps everything.
Cultural genocide? Yes, I worry some about it; one hopes Madonna will anchor David in the knowledge of where he's from. Sluttish egomaniac? I worry less about that; self-promoting as she is, no one has ever said Madonna was a bad mother. African trinket? I worry about that not at all.
I've been to Africa a couple of times —Niger, Sierra Leone, Senegal — and I fancy that I've seen some of what moved Madonna. Meaning the open sewers and open sores, the hungry eyes, the swarming flies, the pigs, the dead dogs, the cook fires, the amputees, the polio, the beggars, the AIDS, the dirt ... and life, enduring.
If you are a human being, it changes you, leaves you with a need to "do." For all her celebrity affectations, Madonna was, at last report, still a human being.
So I don't begrudge her unwillingness to walk past suffering without response. Yours truly sure couldn't. I ended up giving a college scholarship to a Freetown girl and donating to an orphanage in Sierra Leone (you can find it online at www.allasone.org). But frankly, if I had Madonna's resources, I'd be dangerous and that's no lie.
As I've said, I love a good Madonna-bashing as much as anyone. Next time she wears a bra that could put somebody's eye out, count me in. But on this, I give her a pass.
Someday, I suspect David Banda will, too.
