Rosie O'Donnell Causes Controversy with Picture of Daughter

A few days ago, Rosie O'Donnell posted a picture of her youngest daughter on her website. In this picture, her 4 year old daughter is dressed in a camo uniform and sporting a toy ammo belt. This picture has caused quite a stir not only on her website, but on major news stations as well.

Both Fox News and MSNBC aired video segments concerning this picture. Both of these segments were filled with innuendos that Ms. O'Donnell intentionally dressed her daughter this way and "used" her daughter to help make her point concerning her political views. These news segments also quoted messages left on her website by various citizens that seem both concerned and outraged about the pictures.

A visit to the website Rosie.com, however, would shed some light on a few of the views that the news stations failed to report on. Rosie has stated many times in response to questions, that her daughter was playing soldier with her older brothers. You may or may not know, but Rosie and her partner are also proud parents of two boys. It is a quite common thing for boys to dress up and play soldier, cowboys and indians and other games that may seem "violent" to some. It is also quite common for little sisters to want to be involved in their siblings games.

Is Rosie a bad parent for allowing her daughter to dress up as a soldier? Well, if that is the case, then there are millions of other parents in the world that are bad parents as well. Due to her celebrity status, Rosie O'Donnell and her family live under a looking glass. Apparently, viewing people through this looking glass creates quite a skewed view of things. People are claiming she should have her children taken away from her because of this. What kind of world do we live in, that people are actually going to say a parent should have their child taken away from them for allowing them to play dress up?

There are quite a few people that have gone so far as to imply that the ammo belt Rosies daughter is wearing is full of live ammunition. To quote Rosie in an answer to this question "R U 4 Real?" I think this is the perfect answer. One poster stated that "Ammunition belts like that aren't sold at Toys "R" Us." Rosie's response was simply buycostumes.com. A quick check at buycostumes.com indeed proves that ammunition belts exactly like the one her daughter is wearing are in fact sold on that website. As a matter of fact, they offer quite a few varieties of toy ammunition belts.

So what does that say about the companies that sell items like these? If Rosie is a bad parent for allowing her children to dress in costumes and play, what does it say about the companies that produce and sell these costumes for children? Shouldn't these companies come under this amount of scrutiny as well? The fact of the matter is, these companies make these items for a reason. There is a market for it. People allow their children to dress in soldiers costumes all the time. Why the public is choosing to berate Rosie O'Donnell for this, I simply do not know. The only reason I can think of, is that the public has nothing better to do with their time, and indeed must live sad, boring lives.

Before jumping to conclusions about Rosie's little "terrorist" daughter, perhaps you should check out her website for yourself. Rosie is an equal opportunity poster, meaning that she posts the good and the bad responses people send to her on her website. Go and read the many responses this picture has created for yourself. While the news stations only choose to report of the negative comments left, you can see for yourself that there are just as many people who are sane enough to realize that "kids will be kids." One also has to wonder, if people paid less attention to what celebrities are doing with their children, and more attention to their own children, the world really might be a better place.