These days, with celebrity adoptions being all the rage, I often find myself thinking that it must be a mixed blessing to be a kid that's taken into the home of a celebrity. On one hand, you're typically plucked from abject poverty where, in all likelihood, your tenth birthday would find you either: sewing sneakers in a Taiwanese Nike factory, or performing oral sex on tourists in a Romanian brothel. Neither are particularly appealing options (although at least in the brothel, they allow you a cigarette break every couple hours). On the other hand, if you get adopted by a celebrity, it seems you end up as an accessory, like one of Paris Hilton's dogs; only to be replaced by a newer cuter model once your age and ethnicity are no longer novel.
Take for instance the child recently adopted by Elton John and his husband, David Furnish. This child will probably be raised with every advantage one can have. He'll be offered opportunities that few could ever wish for, and probably be loved and cared for in the best possible way. But... he's named after one of Elton John's songs, and he'll probably be kept up all night while his dads throw fabulous Victorian costume parties in their palatial mansion. Kinda shitty, no? (Coulda been worse, he could be named Crocodile Rock I guess).
Any way you cut it, it seems like a drag, until you consider the following unfortunate: Ted Mann. Here's a guy that was raised like a normal kid, only to find out later in life that his biological father was Ted Nugent, the beef jerky eating, s-whistling, bow-hunting, motor-city madman.
Not since Luke Skywalker, has someone discovered that they had a suckier dad.
