If you’ve been scratching your head, trying to parse the political significance of Brad and Angelina’s baby, look no further. Just in: a press release promoting conservative author Katherine DeBrecht, author of Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! (endorsed by Rush Limbaugh and Grover Norquist)and its rollicking sequel, Help! Mom! Hollywood’s in My Hamper. DeBrecht is outraged over “Angelina and Brad going to Africa, a country that is plagued with AIDS, famine and out-of-wedlock pregnancy, to demonstrate that is it perfectly acceptable and even glamorous to have a baby outside of the context of marriage?” Hang on: Africa is a country?
If you rely for your information on the liberal media, you probably think that people in the “country” of Africa are suffering because of disease, underdevelopment, famine and war. You’re wrong, of course. Their problem, according to DeBrecht, a mother of three who was a co-captain of Security Moms for Bush, is all the babies being born to moms who lack marriage certificates. Forget nutrition programs from the evil United Nations: feed those black children some moral fiber for breakfast!
DeBrecht is furious that Shiloh Jolie-Pitt is “unapologetically born and celebrated” despite being conceived by an adulterous couple. But shouldn’t every baby be celebrated? And why should any child apologize for being born? Doesn’t that contradict the idea of a “culture of life”? I’m not sure why the public gets so excited about celebrity babies (or why Brangelina named its baby after a bloody Civil War battle. So many unanswered questions). But compared with DeBrecht’s far-right mean-spiritedness, the media obsession with Shiloh’s birth seems almost touching. If it’s not too late, maybe I’ll go buy that issue of People right now, even though, like everyone else in the world, I’ve seen the pics on Gawker .
