Julia Roberts: Leave my kids alone

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Last week, I wrote an article called ‘Tot Pursuit’ about our obsession with children of celebrities and how tabloids and blogs cover these kids. Some stories are harmless -- Suri Cruise wears a $160 Burberry dress -- but others are scandalous and vicious. Life & Style recently put infant Shiloh on the cover for a story about how her mother, Angelina Jolie Pitt, thinks she’s an ‘outcast.’

Picking on little kids is big business these days. Perez Hilton told me that he felt no remorse about calling Britney’s boys ‘special’ (as in mentally deficient) or deriding Rumer Willis as ‘son of The Mask.’

In my opinion, we’re just a few catcalls from a cultural apocalypse when Forbes ranks ‘Hollywood’s Most Influential Infants’ in an election year. Anyway, my article prompted two writers in Australia at The Age newspaper to pen a follow-up piece called ‘In Tot Pursuit: do children of celebrities have rights?’

It’s an interesting debate as to whether or not children of public figures have any privacy rights. Julia Roberts says: ‘I get pissed off, because I think it is inhuman to chase a woman with her children.’

I agree with her, but it would seem that these kids are fair game when they are out in public. (I talked to a few attorneys about the idea of these kids being public figures by proxy.) Do you think celebs should be able to raise their kids in peace? Or is this scrutiny just another price of fame? Weigh in.