Brangelina (29 page)

At this point, the details become murky. Almaz had been introduced to a local “fixer,” who arranged adoptions for a local agency, and he “agreed to take the baby.” “He promised he would keep in touch. He said he would bring back the baby to visit after five months and he would send me a picture,” claimed Almaz. “He also promised to introduce me to the family that would adopt her.” She said she never actually told the fixer or the authorities that her daughter had died or that the baby was an orphan. “But then [the fixer] came to me and told me the baby had been adopted and taken abroad,” she said. “He said, ‘There will be journalists coming to you and you must deny the whole story and say it is not your granddaughter.’” “He brought this woman who claimed Tena Adam [Zahara] was her daughter. He tried everything to get me to say that it’s not my granddaughter. He even threatened that he’d put me in jail and have me tortured.”

When the
Mail on Sunday
checked into the fixer’s credentials, they discovered that he had been claiming that he worked for the adoption agency that brokered the Jolie adoption, Wide Horizons for Children, and had even distributed business cards claiming that he represented it. But when the story broke, the agency said he was not an employee but was instead employed by an orphanage in Awassa. The agency did not deny it was the fixer who had originally brought Zahara there. “What he has done is tantamount to kidnap,” Mentewab told the newspaper. “He took my daughter and just disappeared with her saying I was dead.”

When the report originally emerged, it prompted a brief stir, with some media falsely claiming that the birth mother was demanding that Zahara be returned to Ethiopia. But Mentewab was reportedly thrilled when she learned that it was Angelina Jolie who had adopted her daughter. “She will have a better life with Angelina,” she told the
Daily Mail
. “If she had stayed with me she could have died. I’m happy to see my daughter in a better life, in a better place. The thing that makes me upset is that Angelina is saying I’m dead. I’m alive and have never had AIDS.” She also expressed a desire for Jolie to bring her daughter to visit her birthplace and family. “She must know her country, she must know her family, that’s where her identity is,” she added.

To this day, Jolie has apparently not brought Zahara to meet her birth mother or to visit the city of her birth, although she has brought her to Ethiopia on more than one occasion.

Given the controversies surrounding the birth of Maddox and Zahara, it was a little unusual to pick up the newspapers in January 2007 and see Jolie criticizing Madonna for illegally adopting a Malawian baby. The pop singer had been at the center of a media storm for several months after she announced that she and her husband, Guy Ritchie, planned to adopt a Malawian boy whose mother had died in childbirth. Aid groups inside the country and abroad had criticized the singer for suddenly announcing that she was planning to adopt an African child. Malawi, it turns out, usually required an eighteen-month residency before a child could be adopted, making it appear that Madonna was somehow flouting the law or that her adoption was being “fast-tracked.”

Despite Jolie’s public admonition, however, there was nothing illegal about Madonna’s adoption. The procedures were being strictly monitored by the Malawian courts to ensure compliance with the country’s laws. In January, Malawi High Court Judge Andrew Nyirenda issued an “interim order” allowing the singer and her husband to take the young boy, David Blanda, back to England, where they had to undergo a rigorous vetting process before the adoption could be finalized. Two years later, the adoption was finally approved. The official report submitted by the child welfare officer to the court described Madonna as a “perfect mum” for David.

A number of media accounts noted that there had been no similar backlash when Angelina Jolie had adopted Maddox and Zahara. “I think Angelina Jolie’s adoptions were thought of differently because she’s always shown an interest in children and in doing good in the world, whereas people felt like Madonna just flew in and suddenly got herself a child,” Anastasia de Waal, of the human-rights group Civitas told the Cox news agency. “What has annoyed people in Britain is that Madonna’s action seems whimsical and that she appears to have flouted the law.”

In fact, there was nothing whimsical or illegal about Madonna’s decision to adopt from Malawi. For months, she had been quietly traveling to the country on behalf of an organization she had founded called Raising Malawi, dedicated to “offering lasting solutions to the orphans of Malawi.” She had chosen to focus her efforts on Malawi when she learned that it was one of the world’s poorest nations, with more than a million orphans in a country of only twelve million people and where malaria, drought, poverty, and AIDS had decimated the population.

Months earlier, the pop superstar had announced plans to raise $3 million to build child-care centers, orphanages, and support aid projects in the poverty-stricken country. She was already working closely with international aid experts such as Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, as well as local development officials on the most effective ways to help the people. Long before Madonna announced her adoption plans, in fact, an Associated Press writer visited the village of Mphandula and interviewed the locals about her efforts. “The village headman here has never heard of Madonna the pop star,” AP reported, “but he has heard of Madonna the philanthropist.”

Madonna had even dedicated one hundred percent of the royalties from a children’s book she had written to her Malawi charity. The book,
The English Roses
, became an international bestseller. She vowed to match every dollar donated by the public with a dollar from her own pocket, putting her money where her mouth was, just like Jolie herself. Unlike Jolie, however, Madonna did not publicize her efforts in advance. She chose to travel without a media entourage or photographer while she visited the country and traveled to remote African villages. She didn’t seem to need the services of a certain Trevor Neilson.

* * * *

Whether it arises from a sense of noblesse oblige or as an attempt to avoid appearing too greedy, there is a long tradition of philanthropy among American millionaires. For more than a century, many of the nation’s greatest universities, hospitals, museums, and social-welfare organizations have relied on the generosity of wealthy benefactors from the world of business.

During the 1990s, as Microsoft cornered the software market and Bill Gates became known as the richest man on the planet, some people began to notice that while he had amassed a fortune of many billions of dollars, the computer entrepreneur didn’t give very much of it away. He did give to numerous charities, but his donations were relatively paltry compared to his net worth.

The criticism came to a head in 1998, when Ralph Nader took Gates to task in an open letter urging him to sponsor a conference on the “unequal distribution of wealth” in America. In Nader’s letter, he noted that Gates was worth more than the combined wealth of the poorest forty percent of Americans, excluding the value of their cars. “His wealth is highly publicized,” Nader later told an interviewer. “His social responsibility is yet to be developed.”

The response from Gates’s philanthropic advisor, Rose Berg, was only minutely reassuring. Berg said Gates and his wife Melinda were “just beginning their philanthropy and plan to give most of their money away.” Indeed, the billionaire and his wife had established a foundation and were busy making plans to distribute huge sums of money. Yet in the public eye, he was being portrayed as a greedy capitalist, which is a disastrous position for somebody under scrutiny from the U.S. government for monopolistic business practices. Gates needed to change his image.

Enter Trevor Neilson. Plucked directly from the White House, where he had worked in the travel office arranging President Bill Clinton’s trips abroad, Neilson was a well-connected Democrat. This was considered a definite asset, given that Microsoft was being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department at the time. But Neilson also had a flair for public relations, which he employed aggressively after he was appointed director of public affairs and director of special projects for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Very soon after Neilson was appointed, long, flattering profiles began appearing in the media about the philanthropic efforts of Gates and his wife, and soon every American had heard that Gates was planning to give away his entire fortune before he died. By the time Neilson left Microsoft to work for Angelina Jolie as her “philanthropic advisor,” the Gates Foundation was the largest charitable foundation in the world, and Gates had given away more money than anybody else in history.

Neilson’s specialty wasn’t deciding where philanthropic dollars could be spent most effectively; it was advising benefactors on how to use their giving to enhance their public image. This became clear when Jolie launched her thinly veiled broadside on Madonna over the adoption of baby David. Assuring the media that she was “horrified” by the attacks on the singer, Jolie proceeded to dig the knife in. “Madonna knew the situation in Malawi, where [David] was born,” she sniffed. “In that country, there isn’t really a legal framework for adopting. Personally, I prefer to stay on the side of the law.” Of course, Madonna had in truth adopted the baby legally and had not flouted any of Malawi’s laws, as Jolie implied. So why did she appear to undermine the humanitarian efforts of another celebrity? The answer is Trevor Neilson.

“Neilson is a genius,” another Hollywood philanthropy advisor gushed. “This is the same guy, remember, who turned Bill Gates from Scrooge to Albert Schweitzer. He practically created Brangelina. Pitt and Jolie may hate the term
Brangelina
when it’s used by the tabs to gossip about their lives,” she explained, “but it’s become a very, very powerful brand. It’s practically synonymous with goodness in the public’s mind.” She credits Neilson with intertwining the couple’s philanthropy with their acting careers, which she says is another example of his genius. “Their philanthropy is the source of their power,” she explained. “I can’t name another example of that phenomenon in my entire career, and I’ve been doing this since the eighties.”

As for Jolie’s apparent 2007 attack on Madonna: “That wasAngelina’s way of saying, ‘There’s not enough room in this racket for the both of us.’ She was saying, ‘Get out of my way, bitch, you’re horning in on my turf.’” The attack on Madonna came just as Jolie was solidifying her image as “Saint” Angelina. “Madonna was starting to work on some of the stuff that Jolie thought she had a monopoly on. Africa was her domain. I think Madonna was starting to hang out with Bill Clinton and his foundation, and that was another area that Brangelina thought was their territory. I’ll bet Neilson had a hand in that.”

Why did the whole world know about Jolie’s globe-trotting humanitarian efforts, while Madonna was attacked as a dilettante? “That’s easy,” she said. “Angelina brings the cameras along, and there’s nothing wrong with that. She’d argue that by conducting her missions in the public eye, she’s helping bring the world’s attention to very important issues. Can you argue with that? Do you think most of her fans had ever heard of Namibia before she went there? Do you think they ever thought of anything associated with celebrities other than what dress they wore on the red carpet?”

Asked to what extent she felt Jolie’s humanitarian activities were about enhancing her public image, the philanthopy consultant responded, “I have no idea what her motivation is, but I can tell you about my own clients. They want to do something good, and they donate a lot of money to charities. Some of them even work very hard fundraising for their cause of the moment, but none of them gets their hands dirty like Jolie. I’d kill to have her as my client. Is she an altruist? Of course not, but hardly anybody in Hollywood is.”

The advisor refused to identify her own clients but proceeded to name “a handful” of celebrities she believes to be altruists. She said that David Letterman has given “scads” of his own money to various charities over the years and to a lot of individuals in need. “I’ve heard that he won’t allow any of the recipients to talk about it. I’ve had a few clients like that, who want no recognition. I still have some, but none of them is famous.”

She explained that about thirty percent of her business is made up of celebrities who have been referred by agents, managers, and publicists to get some positive public exposure for their clients. “I like to say that when something tarnishes their image, it’s my job to garnish their image.” Still, she says most of her clients have their hearts in the right places and that the majority of celebrities in Hollywood are genuinely compassionate and want to use their money to do good. “There’s a reason Fox News is always complaining about Hollywood liberals,” she said, laughing.

She said that Barbra Streisand is another celebrity who gives very quietly and whose foundation is considered a model. She described Dolly Parton as a “genius” at using her money to achieve results. “Have you ever been to Dollywood?” she asked. “Dolly Parton practically rescued the entire Smoky Mountains region out of poverty. That’s why she built it.” Among the other celebrities she cited is Madonna, who has been raising money for AIDS and gay causes practically from the first time anybody heard of her. As for Jolie, “I’ll cut the nuts off anyone who says that Angelina Jolie’s humanitarian activities are phony,” she warned. “She and Madonna do a lot of good.”

Likewise, British entertainment journalist Annette Witheridge of the
Daily Mirror
, who has covered Jolie extensively, believes Jolie’s efforts are sincere. “I want to believe her humanitarian work is for real,” she said. “I don’t think anyone could see such awful suffering without being affected. [The actor] Rupert Everett once went half-heartedly on an Oxfam mission to Africa. He hated it, couldn’t wait to get home. And when he did, he realized that the sight of starving orphans had got to him. He couldn’t get them out of his mind. Before he knew it, he was back on a plane working for Oxfam, still does stuff for them to this day. Maybe Angelina felt the same way. I can certainly understand her wanting the children to connect with their roots and from there taking on more and more commitments for UNICEF, etc. Pre-Maddox, I could not have imagined her popping up as a Mother Theresa character helping starving orphans. Motherhood clearly changed her.”