Me and the tabloids

CMinor has up a piece about "Our Lady of the Wal-Mart" (via Man with Black Hat), a rather aggressively ugly painting that thinks it's clever in depicting Angelina Jolie hovering Madonna-like over the aisles of Wal-Mart, Cambodian orphans filling in for cherubs. Perhaps Americans are thirsting for role models, but I can't really see Ms. Jolie as a latter-day Mother Teresa simply because she has adopted a child. Unsung families all over the country are adoptive parents, and many more long to be but don't have Hollywood money to put their applications on the fast track.

I'm amused by the fascination with the absolutely mundane aspects of the lives of the rich and photogenic. Standing in line at the grocery store is worse than attending a church function for speculation about who's pregnant, who's not, or snide remarks about who hasn't lost her baby weight. "Friends worry Brit's PREGNANT!" "Jen Longs for a Baby!" "Julia Pregnant AGAIN!" How am I supposed to get excited about the natal travails of the stars? I have three children; no one cares. My first two are sixteen months apart, and there were no paparazzi shadowing me to comment on my tell-tale baby bulge. Guess what? Real women get pregnant, sometimes less than a year after a previous pregnancy. We battle the baby bulge, and it's not a big deal, really. Why should it be news that Katie's stomach is slightly rounded? That's life, guys. Get a sense of perspective. Sure, it's work to have children, but it's not unusual to have children. If the only suffering required to be canonized is going through labor unanesthetized, start checking Enquirer for photos of me up in the Celestial Rose. I'll be the one with the baby bulge.