Now that Angelina Jolie's new three-year-old adopted son Pax Thien is starting to settle into his new life of trying to learn a brand new language and having a billion shouting men flashing lights in his face everywhere he goes, it's time to reflect.
When a celebrity like Angelina Jolie adopts a child from a foreign country, it's only natural for questions to be raised. Questions like 'What sort of bloody name is Pax Thien anyway?' 'At what point will Pax Thien be introduced to crazy Auntie Jennifer?' and 'Angelina Jolie adopted that kid a bit quick. Could she have possibly received any preferential treatment because she was the Tomb Raider girl in a couple of rubbish films?' And the answer to that last one is no – Angelina Jolie received her preferential treatment because she got her boobies out in a couple of rubbish films, not because of anything to do with Tomb Raider.
Oh alright, Angelina Jolie didn't get any preferential treatment at all. Happy now?
Adopting kids from a different country is a minefield. Meg Ryan can adopt as many kids as she wants and nobody really pays any attention to her, but when Madonna tries to do the same thing she has to go on Newsnight to defend herself. But so far Angelina Jolie has managed to walk an unsteady line between these two poles, even though she's adopted enough children to legally be able to colonise a small island.
As well as Cambodian Maddox, Ethiopian Zahara and biologically-produced Shiloh Nouvel – who was delivered in Namibia to fool Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt into thinking it was more like an adoption – Angelina Jolie is now the proud adopted mother of Pax Thien Jolie, a three-year-old Vietnamese boy. Trouble is, though, that nobody knew about Angelina Jolie's adoption until a week before it happened. Couple this with a Vietnamese official noting that Angelina Jolie's adoption had been fast-tracked and things start to look a little murky.
Could Angelina Jolie have used her megastar cash to bend a few adoption rules in order to get hold of Pax Thien a bit quicker? No, of course not – and you're jolly well lucky that we don't sue you for insinuating such a thing. As Reuters reports, everything about Angelina Jolie's adoption of Pax Thien was tickity-boo:
The U.S.-based Adoptions From The Heart agency, which handled the adoption for Jolie, said in a statement she began the process last summer in Vietnam. "Throughout Ms Jolie's adoption process, she received no preferential treatment from the Vietnamese government or Adoptions From The Heart," said the statement by Heidi Gonzalez, the non-profit agency's Vietnam coordinator. "Contrary to earlier reports, her application was not fast-tracked," said the statement issued on Friday by the agency based in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. On March 9, Vietnam's senior adoption official Vu Duc Long said, "In this case, things can move faster because she's a celebrity and she has already found a child".
So there we have it – Angelina Jolie adopted a kid in a vaguely normal way. This earth-shattering revelation has shocked us to our very core, and you'll agree that no other news that will happen in the next few months will even come close to reaching the magnitude of this bombshell.
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