CRY, BABY CRY

Super babies make for great celeb gossip

On a recent cover of Life 038; Style magazine, a towheaded toddler pouted above the headline 8220;New Trouble for Shiloh8221;. Good thing the 20-month-old daughter of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie can8217;t read, because the story went on to detail the 8220;sad pattern8221; of her neglect. Just a week earlier, Life 038; Style8217;s cover line screamed, 8220;Britney8217;s Kids to Be Tested for Drugs: The crisis at home is the most heartbreaking it8217;s ever been!8221;

These days, kids sell. Whether it8217;s a softer-than-pablum feature on Suri Cruise8217;s Scientology parenting or a cover story proclaiming Zahara Jolie-Pitt is a child of rape, taste and ethics are of minor consideration. 8220;The proliferation of weekly tabloids means a fight to get copies sold,8221; says Lisa Granatstein, managing editor of Media Week. 8220;They need something to write about, and you have star couples like Brad and Angelina and Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck having kids.8221;

It8217;s not just those weeklies that report like gossipy aunties. On the Web, coverage of celebrity kids has hit a fever pitch. Babies are branded 8220;ugly losers8221;, and awkward teens get called out as 8220;homely hippos.8221; In Parade.com8217;s end-of-the-year pop-culture quiz, readers were asked: 8220;Who is the most adorable celebrity baby?8221; Violet Affleck won.

In mid-December, Forbes went so far as to rank 8220;Hollywood8217;s Most Influential Infants8221; on its Web site. For the record, it was Shiloh for having garnered mention in 2,000 articles over the course of the past year.

When it comes to the right or wrong of slinging insults at innocent youths, celebrity blogger Perez Hilton is blunt. 8220;I don8217;t feel bad at all,8221; he says of posts on PerezHilton.com. The blogger sees celebrity kids as fair game because they8217;re out in public. So do other celebrity gossip Web sites, such as A Socialite8217;s Life and the Evil Beet, that mock celebrity kids on their physical appearances. Ask the editors of these publications for an explanation and they8217;re either mute or coy.

Michelle Lee, editor of In Touch and Life 038; Style, says that 10-15 percent of their covers feature children of celebrities. 8220;We weren8217;t attacking Shiloh on our cover story.8221; In essence, the magazine reported that Angelina and Brad didn8217;t bring their infant along on a bike ride in New Orleans.

Granatstein dismisses most stories as harmless but found it 8220;disgraceful8221; when it was reported that Zahara Jolie-Pitt, whom the couple adopted from a woman in Ethiopia, was conceived as the result of a rape. According to Sandra Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Centre, the coverage of kids is a breach of good taste rather than the law. 8220;It8217;s the Faustian bargain that these celebrities make for fame,8221; she says. That pact never expires either. At the moment, perezhilton.com finds Suri 8220;adorable.8221; But when she grows into an awkward adolescent? 8220;I8217;ll say, 8216;What happened to Suri,8217;8221; Hilton says, 8220;if she8217;s ugly.8221;
-Monica Corcoran LAT-WP