Squinting like a meercat in a business suit, Jon Stewart proved that he was indeed the best fake news anchor in the history of best fake news anchors when he said this about Nadya Suleman, a.k.a. the Octomom: “Who goes from 6 children to 14? What does she think? That she’s playing blackjack or something?”
The Daily Show host may have asked a rhetorical question, but that hasn’t stopped people from displaying their half-hearted scorn towards the 33-year-old “bad mother” from California. With no immediate income, Suleman has been relying on food stamps, US taxpayers’ money, and the kindness of God to raise her four daughters and ten sons. That is, of course, until she bags the golden ticket to fleeting fame: her very own reality show.
Since she saturated the news cycles last month, however, most of the world has yawned and moved on to watching the panic over the swine flu virus unfold, oftentimes live via Twitter. Still, Octomom’s unprecedented ridiculousness and oversized lips have left a mark on popular culture. While her idol, Angelina Jolie, can certainly afford to collect toddlers from ravaged nations and hand them insane trust funds, Suleman most definitely can not. So why are folks like her having litters and not single births? Are they cracked out?
Jon minus 9?
As objects of otherworldly fascination, the Gosselins have turned into celebrities. Like it or not, the show has triggered some very strong feelings — some negative — toward Jon and Kate and science. Some viewers do not appreciate the fact that the children are now their parents’ cash cows; with crafty editing, typical tantrums — Mady, I’m talking to you — become money shots. (Jon is said to work in IT, but it’s most likely that the gods of network television pay more.)
That said, Jon & Kate Plus 8 does have its informative tangents. Proving that Korean blood is hella strong, the kids are actually cute to watch, especially when they cry or hit each other. For their sake, let’s hope that the proceeds of the show go to their college funds. On the other hand, Kate can be a controlling snarky bitch. Maybe it’s a shtick, but the hubby is clearly whipped; those pesky cheating rumors — In Touch Weekly, the beacon of truth, once reported that Jon was seen partying with college girls — may not be going away anytime soon.
Doing it for the lord!
Then again, if there were an award for the Most Polarizing Freakishly Large Family on TV, it would have to go to the Duggars. Consisting of parents Jim Bob and Michelle and their 18 children, whose names all start with the letter J, they headline TLC’s 18 Kids and Counting.
Not only old-school but Old Testament, the Duggars are conservative Baptists trying to shelter their children from the evils of the outside world. By the looks of it, the kids, educated at home, do not swap nekkid pics of themselves on the Internet because they’re hardly online. Jim Bob and Michelle have also imposed a buddy system on their brood to manage their daily tasks, which have, at one point, included building their house.
Pregnancy Addicts
Michelle’s happy, resilient uterus aside, what the Duggars are promoting is highly irresponsible. Whether a family has the financial means to support 18 children is less important than the parents’ capacity to provide quality individual attention to all of them.
It’s nuts. Children should not be forced to wear matching outfits and spend every waking moment together; moreover, they have no business bringing themselves up in an isolated environment. We are all unique creatures so if you think about it, Jesus wouldn’t like that for realz.
The emergence of pregnancy addicts like Octomom, Kate Gosselin and Michelle Duggar may sate the voyeur inherent in all of us. But with 6.4 billion people on this planet and counting, do we really need more misguided parents bringing in even more mouths to feed? People are free to screw like rabbits, but they should be more mindful of the consequences. As the motivational meme says, “A vagina is not a clown car.”