It bothers me that Malawi won’t let Madonna adopt that little baby girl Mercy. Maybe if it was all anonymous, it might be OK. Maybe if there’d been a group of orphans (finalists if you like) it might have been less hurtful. It would be less cruel if no single orphan knew they were the actual baby who had won the lottery to become Madonna's Next Top Child.But Mercy will one day grow up and learn that when she was a baby, she had this opportunity. As fateful as the circumstances she was born into, she was offered a quantumly different opportunity. And the life people dream of, to the power of ten, could have been hers. But her government said no. Envy? In years to come, as a young adult in Malawi, Mercy will look around her humble surroundings, and wonder what the hell her underperforming handout-requiring state was trying to prove. What chip on their shoulder possessed them to stop one of their own being scooped into the golden lifeboat? Couldn't they have thought of it as a nice thing for the baby? Surely just the music and dance lessons would make it worthwhile. Not to mention the chance to get past infant mortality. Malawi owe Mercy a life-long debt, big-time. I don’t know what could pay it back. No income tax ever? President for life? Maybe the kindest thing to do is to change her name, and gently brainwash her so she never finds out -- what could have been. Sigh.