Breaking news: Celebrities can be parents too

IT has taken longer than any of us could have imagined, but in the last nine days, our celebrity parenting obsession has officially reached bizarre proportions.

This milestone, looming since the days of Demi Moore’s infamous pregnant nude shot on the cover of Vanity Fair, was achieved through the prime-time TV interviews of two superstar new mothers, Britney Spears and Angelina Jolie, on programs otherwise dedicated to actual news.

The parenting skills of these women, in any other context, would be no more important to us than, say, their last red carpet walk. But today celebrities, having transcended the image of cultural confection, must devote the same enthusiasm they’d bring to a press junket for their most recent movie or CD to the staging of happy family lives. The public already demands fashion-forward pregnancies and “candid” first photos of (enviably thin) mother and baby. Now we have the televised post-baby sit-down, presented as a news event, preferably with a male reporter to help elevate it to something of real journalistic import.

Take poor Spears -- and yes, we are collectively pitying this multi-platinum pop star and her apparently isolated life up there in that backwater Malibu, where she is hounded day and night by paparazzi. She was once -- as Matt Lauer cheerfully pointed out on his June 15 “Dateline NBC” special via clip after clip after clip -- hard bodied, young and successful, a sexpot, yet virginal ... an American dream. Then, as Lauer reminded her ominously, “the press turned.”

It seemed Spears lacked a crucial skill needed to thrive as a celebrity parent -- the fine art of the staged family vignette. Control is key, and since the birth of Sean Preston in October, Spears has seemed utterly incapable of it. Unlike the carefully coiffed Catherine Zeta-Jones, seen frolicking at the park with her toddler daughter Carys, or Gwen Stefani, snapped with perfect lipstick and jewelry and 2-week-old Kingston James in her arms, Spears was photographed behind the wheel of her convertible, her infant son slumped pitifully forward in his forward-facing car seat.

For her interview with Lauer, in which she addressed accusations of being a “redneck” and a “bad mom,” Spears, just 24, looked hard, wearing visible hair extensions, a translucent sleeveless top with spilling cleavage and flip-flops. She smacked her gum and wiped her nose with the back of her hand as she sobbed over the paparazzi’s relentless pursuit of her. It was ugly and sad and yet another reminder that child stardom often leads to tragic adulthood. But that was all.

For his part, though, Lauer might as well have been nailing President Bush on those missing WMDs as he dug through a pile of Star and People magazines, repeatedly referencing sneering headlines, doggedly refusing to let Spears articulate the hope she might escape the paparazzi and give her children a normal life. “Is that possible?” he asked, an unmistakable twinkle in his eye. “With bigger gates? I mean, how are you going to do that, Britney?” In contrast, Angelina Jolie’s two-hour saga on Tuesday, a CNN special edition of “Anderson Cooper 360,” proved the power of celebrity control. Jolie had her people offer an interview to Cooper’s people out of the blue because, as Cooper writes in his blog, “of my interest in Africa.” She arrived looking positively transcendent just weeks after the birth of her daughter Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt, wearing an elegant, black calf-length dress and artfully spare makeup, her hair swept back and not a tattoo or a blood vial in sight.

But this wasn’t your routine slap-and-tickle celebrity sit-down. This was the cable network’s “World Refugee Day” coverage, with Jolie as its Holy Mother. Cooper’s fawning interview, titled “Angelina Jolie: Her Mission & Motherhood,” repeatedly trumpeted the actress and U.N. goodwill ambassador as “the most famous mother in the world,” and was packaged with reports from Christiane Amanpour and others.

Cooper even dredged up his own 1993 piece about one dying Sudanese boy, all so that he and Jolie -- star to star -- could share a knowing look when she recalled seeing her first dying refugee child. He and his furrowed brow talked over wrenching pictures of starving African children and the beautifully disheveled Jolie in a windblown refugee camp, coupled with images of Jolie at the Golden Globes, and a split-second shot of Jolie in Another Life with Billy Bob Thornton. It was pandering, but irresistible nonetheless, if for no other reason than that Jolie seemed determined to poke fun at her own self-involvement and keep the focus away from her private life -- even though, of course, that was the reason the cameras were there.

“Even just today, I was, you know, breastfeeding” -- she chuckled -- “and tired and thinking, ‘God, I really don’t know how I’m going to get myself together to be thinking for this interview,’ ” Jolie said. “But you think, ‘Jesus! The things these people go through! I owe it to all of them to get myself together. It’s the least I can do.’ ”

Indeed. Jolie does deserve some credit for using the publicity to help the world’s starving and displaced.

Maybe, if we didn’t know that other Jolie -- who painted in her own blood and gave her brother an open-mouthed kiss at the Oscars -- it would be easier to watch a show like this and forget she is the spawn of Hollywood. And maybe going forward, when celebrities’ adventures in parenting are presented to us as important news, as in the movies, we will learn to suspend disbelief.