Anyone looking for a break from depressing news about honor killings? Here's a piece of fluff for you, straight from the BBC (as everyone knows, fluffy news sounds less fluffy when read in a British accent): Angelina Jolie might give birth in France.
I know, I know. You've been staying up nights thinking to yourself, "What country -- nay, what continent -- will Jolie bless with the arrival of her twins?" Will it be Africa? No, no, Shiloh -- her other biological child -- called dibs on Namibia. (Fun trivia fact: Shiloh is the only infant to have been re-created in wax by Madame Tussauds!) Will it be Cambodia? Or Ethiopia? Or Vietnam? No, no and no. She's already adopted kids from all those places. According to Jolie, who was caught by the BBC at Cannes -- where she was promoting her new oeuvre, "Kung Fu Panda," she is not yet sure where she will give birth, but is "certainly thinking" about France. Sacre bleu!
Every once in a while I get so inured to our crazy obsession with the mundane details of celebrity lives that I find myself thinking that it's almost normal, for example, to have US Weekly "exclusives" about how John Mayer and Jennifer Aniston reportedly ate dinner together or how Mayer -- I hope you're sitting down -- "[Took] Jennifer Aniston's Pooch Norman For a Walk." (OK, OK, here's the link.) I start worrying that if we're already at the point where dog walking is headline news, 15 years from now there's going to be no new trash to read. (Justin Timberlake cleaned Jessica Simpson's cat's litter box? That is so 2008.) But I should have more trust in the tabloids. Apparently after being asked whether she'd consider popping her twins out in France, a Swedish reporter stepped in to ask if she'd maybe consider Sweden as well. "Not at this time," said Jolie. "But, you never know, there's more babies. Who knows?"
It's true. There are more babies. And if Jolie and Pitt continue their current rate of reproduction and adoption, Sweden's dream may well be realized. But I have another suggestion: If and when Jolie becomes pregnant again, she should hold a global auction over which country gets to be blessed with the birth of her child. Obsessed fans worldwide could donate money to Jolie's favorite humanitarian organizations, and as a prize, she'd give her kid their passport. Pretty babies, support for humanitarian causes, dual citizenship for the kid, more tabloid fodder ... everyone's a winner.
Shares