Octomom & Brood Invade The Today Show

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A warning:  you should only watch this video after taking at least 5 tranquilizers.  It's Octomom on the Today Show.  Watch her brood create complete mayhem on the set while Nadya Suleman manically yells over Ann Curry for the entire interview and Ann and crew try to corral the out-of-control kids.  The scariest thing of all?  This isn't even the whole clan.  5 kids are missing.

Oh, and she's retracting the statement she made to In Touch Magazine in which she said she hates babies and regrets having them.  Guess that interview was a weak moment for her.

God help this woman.

Octomom Goes to the Dogs

In the news today: Octomom, Nadya Suleman, has discovered first-hand that pushing out too many puppies is not such a good thing, so she has agreed to help PETA promote their message that people should spay and neuter their pets.

Of course the obvious question is - why wasn't Octomom encouraged to get herself spayed after the first 6 kids?

The Full Story

Casting Stones

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The Today Show likes to talk about families, and babies, and pregnancy and parenting A LOT. They spend lots of air time promoting and glorifying parenthood - just one of the thousands of voices in the deafening chorus of media pronatalists singing the praises of having children and providing endless support and encouragement for people who choose that lifestyle. I challenge you to find one 30-minute slot on The Today Show in which you will not be subjected to a piece on motherhood, or babies, or parenting techniques, or infertility treatments, or mid-life mothering, or debates over innoculations, or child discipline, or child health issues and the list goes on adfinitum. The pro-parenthood propoganda never stops...

EXCEPT when it comes to the Octomom. I guess even the parenthood-obsessed Today Show has to draw a line somewhere. Watch the above clip and listen to Dr. Almighty Snyderman (a Today Show regular) cast her judgment on Nadya Suleman, Suleman's doctors and our culture's obsession with multiple births and bad parenting, a.k.a. "bad parent porn."

I agree with Dr. Almighty, but here's the rub: The Today Show is one of the very outlets that relentlessly feeds our culture's breeding obsession, and fuels the attention-seeking, baby-obsessed psychosis of human breeding machines like Nadya Suleman. This in turn ramps up the demand for unethical doctors who will do whatever they can to service women like Octomom, yet now The Today Show stands in judgement of the very monster it helped to create.

The Today Show may cast all the stones it likes, but today I am casting some stones right back at it.

The Video You've All Been Waiting For

Octomom giving birth!

Get out your checkbook again...

According to TMZ, Octocrazy is shopping around the video of her giving birth to the octuplets for seven figures.

Over the Coals

She's baaaack.

In this interview, Ann Curry rakes Nadya Suleman over the coals about irresponsibility and selfishness. It is fascinating to listen to Suleman's rationale in explaining how she is not irresponsible and selfish.

Suleman states she currently has no income coming in (except for her children's disability payments and food stamps). She was using student loans to support her family, but at this point that source of money has dried up (incidentally, aren't there any rules regulating the use of student loans for purposes other than school?). At the same time, she explains that she is responsible because she will be able to support her children once she is finished school in a year or so.

Question #1: how does she expect to pay for her final year of graduate school when she's used up her student loans to support her family?

Question #2: If she has no source of income right now, how will she support her family while she is finishing up her graduate degree and then trying to find a job?

I guess that's where the media comes in - the book deals, the magazine deals, the interview deals, the reality show, the Lifetime Movie of the Week. Face it, you know they are coming. In fact, just this week it was reported that she's been offered a cool million to star in (of all things) a porn film. Let's also not forget her Beg-a-Thon website with PayPal functionality as well. Oh, and her poor friends, family and church members who have to step up to the plate to support her egregious lifestyle.

And this, above all, is what enfuriates me - that obscene selfishness and irresponsibility gets rewarded in our culture; that when all is said and done, it's all about MONEY (and ratings); that people who live responsibly and within their means have to work their asses off for every dollar they get, while narcissistic, self-absorbed nutcases like Nadya Suleman get everything handed to them on a silver platter.

Train Keeps a Rollin'

In the ongoing train wreck saga that is Nadya Suleman, there is certainly no shortage of material to write about. Where do I start?

In this interview with Ann Curry of the Today Show, Suleman defends herself against her many critics. Apparently (and not surprisingly), the primary thrust of anger directed at Suleman concerns the fact that despite having no job and 6 children already to support, she deliberately set out to have an entire brood of additional children with no means to support them, leaving the expense to the taxpayers. Interestingly, in her first interview with Ann Curry, Suleman had stated she and her children do not receive welfare, however it has since come to light that she receives food stamps as well as a total of $1,800 per month in SSI payments for her autistic son and 2 other children with disabilities (said disabilities, by the way, are more likely in multiple births - another reason it is selfish to be implanted with multiple embryos).

Suleman's explanation? "I am not living off of any taxpayer money. If I am - if it is food stamps - it's a temporary resource. We receive no cash and it's every month - about $190 - and it's going for food."

Excuse me? So in one sentence she states she is not living off taxpayer money, yet she states she receives food stamps. Who does she think pays for said food stamps?

She then goes on to defend herself against statements made by her own mother who claimed that Nadya is incapable of of caring for 14 children. Nadya's response? "What human in this planet is capable to take care of 14 independently without support from family, from friends, from church!?"

Precisely! This is exactly why a jobless, broke, single mother with 6 kids has no business having 8 more!

Let me ask you a question, Nadya. Did you consult with your family, friends and church members before you voluntarily got implanted with a multitude of embryos to ascertain whether they were willing or interested in "helping" you with a new litter of 8 children? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps people have their own lives to live, their own spouses and/or children to care for? Maybe they would like to focus on them. Maybe they would like to attend to their own families, instead of sacrificing their time, money and effort to accommodate your selfish desire for a boatload of kids that you have no means to support or care for.

Suleman says (with a chuckle) that we've all heard the saying "it takes a village to raise a child. Well, this will take a lot of villages!"

Thanks, Nadya, for volunteering us all to take care of the problems you've created.

Despite her desire for the villagers to rally together to tend to her family, she simultaneously holds the view that people should not "dissect" her life or make judgements about it. "It's really kind of sick because I think people really need to focus on their own lives...and stop trying to fixate on other people. I think that's unfortunate for them."

Good point, Nadya. Actually, we'd like to focus on our own lives, but since you recruited us villagers to raise your children, our focus has understandably shifted to you.

On a separate, but related issue, I pose a question to you today. How is it that someone who has no job, lives at home with her parents, has a boatload of children to support and is living off of food stamps, disability payments and student loans, can afford to have substantial plastic surgery costing (according to one plastic surgeon) in the area of $20,000? Don't know what I am talking about? Check out these 2 photos of Suleman - one from a few years ago and a recent photo - and tell me if anything looks suspicious to you:

Let's connect the dots here. Could it be that her obsession with having children has been fueled (or exacerbated) by the rampant pronatalist glorification and worship of breeding and motherhood in the media? Could it be that Suleman craves the adoration heaped upon the Queen-of-all-prolific-Mothers, Angelina Jolie?

I have written quite a bit about the danger of media pronatalism and this is the ultimate example of what can happen to people who get whisked away on the pronatalist train as it careens down the tracks.

(I don't blame Angelina, by the way. She is apparently just as creeped out by Suleman as the rest of us.)

Get out the Checkbook!

Hear ye, Hear ye!

Nadya Suleman is now soliciting donations. It's time for us all to pitch in and pay for her breeding obsession.

What are you waiting for!? Get out that checkbook!

P.S. Check out the biblical names for the babies. Is there some kind of law that breeding machines must also be religious nuts?