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Take our fun flag quiz!!!
[n.b. this is an old post I wrote when I was blogging for Adoption.com--thank ya to the Worsted Witch for reminding me to repost this]
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Okay, for those souls too busy watching the Olympics to be obsessed with Celebrity Fertility, I will update you: the actress Meg Ryan has adopted a baby girl from China. Get it here, from none other than the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4653752.stm
I find this exceedingly ironic given the flap that I was privy to while in Korea. East Asia, as you may or may not know, is a big repository for celebrity shills, people who are above "tainting" themselves with overexposure here, but gladly push all sorts of bizarre products in Asia because 1. they get paid a lot and 2. no one's going to see the ads. This was sort of the bummed out, lower-than-low situation Bill Murray found himself in the movie Lost in Translation as a former star now sunk to touting some whiskey he doesn't even drink and in the meantime loathing himself for falling this low, loathing the Japanese people who were now providing his living.
The people I saw most regularly in ads were Sly Stallone, Brooke Shields, and Meg Ryan. Koreans loooooooove Meg Ryan because she is "cute." And the strange product she endorsed and most likely never used was a soap called Sexy-Mild. The ads, print and TV, were everywhere. I can't remember the exact details of the imbrogilio as it was over ten years ago, but I think she was on Letterman or some other TV talk show back in the good ol' US of A, and the host, justifiably, was needling her a little for being such an overseas shill, and she said something to the effect of (and I paraphrase), "Well, if the people in China or Japan or whatever are so dumb they buy the products just because my face is on it, that's their problem. Plus, it smells bad in China." At least, this is how my Korean colleagues (many of whom have excellent English comprehension skills) recounted it to me.
She obviously must have forgotten that there's AFKN (Armed Forces Korea Network) in Korea, which pipes in American TV for the GIs, but is accessible by anyone. Soon the entire Korean nation was in an uproar over her words. Everyone was hopping mad! She might have made the smelly comment after that; I can't remember, but I do remember it took a few combative news cycles before she realized her advertising image was at stake and she eventually released an apologetic video.
The last celebrity flap like this that I can remember (much milder, actually) was when Kathie Lee Gifford was so upset when she was denied a baby from China because she and her husband's ages added together exceeded 100 (you do the math!)
Anyway, I wish Meg Ryan luck and she could still redeem herself in my Korean American eyes by taking the flag quiz, at the top.
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