It's not been long since I felt compelled to address a poorly composed bit of tripe from anti-adoption swill-tosser and Origins co-founder Mirah (aka Marsha) Riben.

The last time, she was slinging words that accused international adoptive parents of being racists and perpetrators of "cultural genocide".

(For a look at this from an cultural anthropologists view, see this post from January.)

Apparently stepping up the attack on international adoption and trying to build some momentum behind her 'cause', Mothers Day must have seemed too magnetic an attraction to let go by without attaching some bottom-feeder fodder, and a celeb name to grab attention:

"A Mothers' Day Letter to Angelina Jolie ...

... and all considering international adoption ... "

Oh, paaaaleeeeeeaase!

Even to as big a fan of the ellipsis as I am, such indiscriminant and enthusiastic use does not convey value on the words contained between the dots.

And could more blatant pandering be plastered as a headline? I suppose I should simply wait for her next piece of work to find out.

This one, however, will not go without a word or 300 from me.

Starting off with a simpy "I cannot help but wonder ..." Golly gee whiz and shucks, Ange, old buddy, I'm just trying to set you straight here, are you "aware" that there are kids in foster care in Amercia, and that if everyone adopting internationally adopted from foster care in America instead there would be fewer kids in foster care in America?

Someone inhabiting a narrow world could find that a credible argument against international adoption, I suppose. After all, aren't American kids SO much more important, valuable and worthy of a loving family than any of them ferriners?

I love the "I was always taught that charity begins at home" line she drops in, too. It has such a nice touch of feigned humility overlaid with a hint of superiority, then WHAM!, it immediately turns and sticks a knife in: "I wonder why you, and others who adopt internationally, turn their back on these children."

Yuck.

Sometimes it is so very easy to win at a game of 'spot the agenda', even when someone is purporting to be saying something completely different than what is actually being said.

As Riben obviously feels she must, trying to look informed and balanced and all, she plunks the The Adoption Institute and Ethica into her blather without linking to anything specific ... all the better to give an impression of corroboration ... then takes more than 200 words from David Smolen's diatribe on adoption I wrote about recently, concerned that it would be grazed like pollen on stink weed by the anti-adoption brigade.

She blah-blahs on, as usual, hitting all the emotive buttons she can -- bribery, kidnapping, profiteering, sale into adoption -- eventually coming around to her big finish ... one of the dumbest sentences I've ever read on the topic from any pinheaded direction:

Isn’t it far more compassionate to use wealth – such as that of Angelina Jolie – to help an entire village rather than ”rescue” one child in a fashion that some criticize as supporting a network of corrupt child traffickers?

Would anyone like to guide this deluded, confused, blinkered and agenda-burdened woman toward any of the miles of column inches that exist on how much of Angelina Jolie's wealth goes to helping 'entire villages' (including New Orleans), or what sort of contributions Raising Malawi has made toward the lives of children in that country thanks to Madonna? (She's slammed in the article in spirit, even if she's not mentioned.)

You might also want to point out that tacking the word "traffickers" to the end of a piece doesn't imbue the preceding pap with gravitas.

There are issues surrounding international adoption, but this simplistic bombast, as with other Mirah (aka Marsha)-esque tirades plopped all over the Internet like remnants of an elephant's breakfast after having passed through the digestive tract, making its malodorous appearance with a heavy thud does not mean there are any golden balls of wisdom to be found amidst the steaming verbiage. Most often, as with so much in life, poop is just poop.