Readers of yesterday's International Adoption post on Indian food and tap dancing chimps are welcome to note my clairvoyant powers and wonder in amazement about the size and clarity of my crystal ball, but predicting that the media would be sleazy and lazy enough to appropriate the Zoe's Ark mess, truss up a few bits, pre-masticate the blob, then present the results on a plate for mass consumption was a practice in little more than reading that oh-so-obvious writing on the wall.

I didn't have to look too far into the future, either, as only 24 hours later the Voice of America came up with this irresponsible undigestible nugget of nonsense, "Scandal in Chad Raises Adoption Debate".

Yes, the scandal has prompted adoption debate, but only because people pushing for it refuse to admit that this is NOT A STORY ABOUT ADOPTION, not only refusing to admit this, but going well out of the way to twist this train wreck of a mess into something about adoption.

The incident in Darfur is not the first time seemingly well-intentioned adoption campaigns have gone awry.

THIS WAS NOT AN ADOPTION CAMPAIGN.

As it so often happens when the indolent and ignorant take a stab at provocative, they get it all wrong, and through cherry-picking random quotes that overlap the fringes of their misunderstood topic thinking to clarify what they don't grasp even the basics of, they make matters worse and cloud their own muddy waters.

This report quotes some of the biggies in adoption, Linh Song of Ethica and David Brodzinksy of the Adoption Institute, to be specific. Although well-thought and impressive, as one would expect, and perhaps even appearing on the surface to bolster the author's points, the quotes are totally unrelated. Song's quote refers to Operation Baby Lift kids from Vietnam and Brodzinksy's is generic:

"We certainly know that kids who are adopted for all the risks that may be associated with adoption do much better than kids who linger in orphanages who linger long-term in foster care or who are with parents who neglect them or abuse them," said Brodzinksy.

Giving them and others some press is nice and does show that the reporter knows how to use Google, but she has not added anything that makes the situation in Chad equal international adoption.

Trotting out UNICEF is, of course, de rigueur when attempting to cast international adoption in an UNfavorable light, so here we have a quote from a UNICEF mouthpiece:

"Poverty, conflict or whatever you want, should not be a reason to remove a [child] from his natural environment and send him away and think he is better off," added Basse.

UNICEF being strongly biased against international adoption and on the leading edge of the front encouraging tarring the Zoe's Ark affair and adoption with the same brush, this quote might actually be relevant to the story, but that also does not make the story any closer to truly tied to international adoption in any way.

International adoption is NOT about child trafficking. Child trafficking is about crime and slavery and prostitution and packing drugged babies into cargo holds and parents taking kids across borders to be raped for pornographers and children being forced into having to kill for armies.

International adoption is about families.

Are we tired of this topic yet? Well, I am, but I'm not going to let it rest.

If you, too, are as royally PO'd as I am about this VOA pile of rubbish, write to their Washington office at VOANews@VOANews.com and let them know in no uncertain terms that their attempt to turn the Zoe's Ark story into a dog pile on international adoption is irresponsible and that they own the world a correction and better work from now on.