to think this article is wrong and patronizing on so many levels?

[JaneS]

This article is in the Times today. The author is worried that her 9-yea-old son, though
'far from vain', perhaps shouldn't be asking for plastic surgery on his freckles. So she takes him to see cleft palate operations performed in Laos, and proceeds to spend the rest of the article ahhhing at the way her son patronizes the candidates for surgery there.

Am I being unreasonable, or is this crass, patronizing and wrong? Article here:

women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article7037635.ece

Argh, that link doesn't work. Ok, it's in

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/

And it's the first article on the page, 'Seeing a child's life transformed'.

women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article7037635.ece

Well yes. Plus the kid is the definition of a spoilt brat and she sounds like the kind of person you would want to be eaten by bears after a 30second conversation.

Thanks, waitingforbedtime! runnybottom - thank goodness it's not just me! Thought I'd slipped into a parallel universe where that sort of c* was acceptable!

Words cannot describe how much I hate it when people prostitute their children for their 800-words-by-next-Sunday careers.

What? Are you saying that people in the developing world who have shit access to medicine etc are not there exclusively to teach our privileged and extraordinarily lucky children lessons?

weird...she's not even that pretty

Nice one rainfatclouds. Agree completely.
And would add that she and the nipper should be damn glad that the biggest thing they have to worry about is whether he has some freckles and a strong case of narcissism.

I thought it was an early April Fool's.

Yes, I read that today. Was slightly appalled by the article and couldn't quite get what the focus of it was.

ffs he is called armand

A pathetic excuse for a little bit of name-dropping and self-aggrandisement on the part of someone I've never heard of trying to make herself sound both deep and famous.

Irritating, pointless 'journalism.'

This article made me swear in front of my children when I read it.
It's car crash journalism, you know it's awful and yet you Can't. Stop. Reading.

Just another one in a long list of journo children who are described in terms* that make me want to slap them...

*who knows whether they are misreported for effect and for filthy lucre...

Who knew that children who live in extreme poverty were put on this planet for an educational tool for spoilt brats?

I don't think it's right to name call the child. It's bad enough the mother has exposed him to public judgement. Kinder not to join in.

What a vile up herself mother "no you don't look like the boy at school no one likes"
if she is not careful the boy no one likes will be her son. Whats in the bitch comes out in the pup so they say.

So much good could have come from an article sch as this but sadly it is so badly done, so next half term are they off to the local mental hospital to poke crazy people?

Kimi: "Whats in the bitch comes out in the pup"

ROFL... can't wait to use that one

lmao @the whole artcle she looks like a man!!!

Great to have an article about this charity (my cousin was born with cleftlip/palate), but I wish she'd written it without the "hook" to her son.

I love the bit where she says:

'while I?m not one of those parents who gives her children a goat in Africa for Christmas, I decided that a trip to one of the Smile Train facilities in Laos [...] might be just what was needed'

Like that's better!

And surely if s/he's whitened your teeth, Gordon Brown's dentist is also your dentist? Or did you use him/her specifically because you like GB's teeth so much?

Gratuitous name-dropping, anyone?

God. I have never heard of her - but she manages to make Polly bloody Vernon sound as if she has a brain cell. Crap article.

She uses the charity as a tool to write about herself and show off (we already had a holiday to Laos booked) and uses her poor son as a tool too.

And gah at the stupid name-dropping stuff.

Idiot.

How did I manage to kill this then?

The comment at the bottom of the article and ROFL.