Opening caveat: This is not about international adoption.

The story that follows is no more about adoption than was last year's Zoe's Ark fiasco.

Now that that's out of the way, we can all spend a few minutes being appalled while I attempt to head off any tarrings of adoption with the brush so publicly wielded at the pass. It's this story titled, "An artist's ego ... and adoption" that winds my spring this morning, starting off as it does ...

Angelina Jolie and Madonna have adopted African babies. Have they started a trend? That's just one of the ideas investigated in The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins, a terrific new documentary about performance artist Vanessa Beecroft and the African infants she wanted to call her own.

Okay, that's the hook, and it does move beyond the dangling bait, but like by the subject of the piece herself, the "A" word is used for milage.

I've written elsewhere about art reduced to objectification and obscenity, but now that the film is getting press again, it's time to move past the headlines and pay some attention to the fact that no matter how this package is wrapped, it is still not about adoption.

Sure, there are orphans somewhere near the plot, local dignitaries, international lawyers and rigmarole, but these are little more than props for photo ops trotted out by a mercenary.

The picture of Beecroft that slowly comes together is one of ruthless ego and bizarre sentiment. There are a handful of moments in the movie that cut painfully close to the heart of Beecroft's character -- a chat about a childhood friend she tormented for being stupid and ugly, for example, the way she hisses at her assistant, or her seeming indifference to the people around her. In one memorable scene, Beecroft is interrupted during a photo shoot by women in the village who object, strenuously, to the babies being naked in the church. She barricades the door against the women -- in their village, in their church, with their orphans.

There shouldn't be a need to point out that there is no logical link between adoption and the abomination that is the Vanessa Beecroft/ Sudanese twins thing, but having been around the block more than a few times, I suspect attempts at forging one.

Although I do agree with Oscar Wilde's quote, "Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all", as commentary it might be better if some people just shut up, and perhaps mangling Woody Allen works better in today's world: "Art doesn't imitate life, it imitates bad television."

Or, as parenthetically added to the story today, Damien Hirst's words that could be put into a thought bubble above the shots of Beecroft dressed to the nines in white, blondy and pasty, with a black baby on each breast: "I can't wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it."

Photo credit: Not art either/ Sandra Hanks