Stick to buying perfume and forget about kids, Sir Elton

16 September 2009

Rod Liddle says that celebrity adoption has become an unsavoury game of Top Trumps, and that the Ukraine would be right to turn down Elton John’s bid for a baby

The problem is far greater for society much lower down the income scale, with single mothers having children in order to win for themselves a nice council flat (yes: it does happen. It’s not a myth). Families on welfare benefits having ever more children despite their utter inability to provide for them financially: well, we can give them love, they say, provided the state gives us more money. Love isn’t enough, though. The notion that we all have a beholden right to children, regardless of whether we have the financial or psychological means to bring them up, is comparatively new and would have been thought absurd even 40 years ago. Do you remember Eric Idle, in the Life of Brian, playing the part of a member of the Judean People’s Front, a man who wished to be a woman called Loretta and have a baby? ‘How’s the baby going to gestate,’ said Reg, played by John Cleese, ‘you going to keep it in a box?’ The big joke was that these ludicrous revolutionaries all voted that Loretta should have the right to have a baby. Hilarious at the time, in a sort of surreal way. Today Loretta’s claims would not raise an eyebrow, west of the Oder-Neisse, and it would be paid for on the NHS and those who cavilled would be abused as bigots. The Life of Brian was released less than 30 years ago.

Sir Elton has made his bed, a very comfortable bed, and he should lie in it. It is no use suddenly deciding at the age of 63 that he has missed out; children are time-consuming, they demand sacrifice, the stuff he was not prepared to give. There are plenty of other things he can have to keep himself cheerful, anyway. Not so long ago he was seen trying a very expensive Tom Ford fragrance, ‘orchid voile de fleur’, which had the subtle aroma — the critics said — of a man’s crotch. I do not know which man’s crotch: hopefully, for Elton’s sake, not mine. But that’s the sort of stuff our pop stars should spend their money on, not children. Otherwise the next visitor to the bloody orphanage, clasping a rattle and a baby blanket, might be Iggy Pop.

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logdon

September 25th, 2009 8:18am Report this comment

A world gone wrong to quote Bob Dylan from some time ago.

Is the Third World now some picanniny and mix counter for celebs to choose lifestyle surrogates and siblings for the collection they've amassed already?

These people always project a kind of liberal, green, one world socialist demeanour yet act just like the Bourbons, above it all and able to trawl the globe, buying anything which catches their eye.

Nothing or no one is out of bounds when a fistful of dollars can purchase whatever their fancy alights upon to the extent, now even including orphan children.

We live in a world of no responsibility. Anything goes just as long as you have the connections.

From Obama and Brown's prancing and posturing of 'saving the world' to a sixteen year old single mother in some benighted sink estate we see a pattern of mendacity and entitlement which transcends all norms and turns what used to pass as morality on it's head.

Fortunately the down to earth pragmatism of the Ukranian official nails it.

The mind reels

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