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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Look out, Governor Palin, you've got competition for sheer shamelessness
Posted by Jill | 4:30 AM
You had a fairly nice run, Governor Palin, considering that fifteen minutes has now turned into like five. And you did a pretty good job, first trotting out Bristol covering her pregnant belly with the Downs infant you hold up to bolster your pro-life cred but whose face you can't seem to bear to look at; then letting Piper baby-sit, then playing Military Parenter Than Thou with Joe Biden. Then there was using part of that $180,000 RNC stipend to pay for underwear for your brood. But there's a new sheriff in town, a woman whose pure unadulterated shamelessness puts you to, well, shame.

You have SarahPac? Nadya Suleman has her own web site similarly devoted to collecting donations.

UPDATE:

I really hadn't wanted to write about this Angelina Jolie-obsessed nutjob, who is clearly enjoying all the publicity she's receiving for taking the wingnut worship of Teh Baybeezzzzzz and escalating it into a grotesque circus. But at a time when more and more Americans are finding themselves out of work and stomtimes homeless, the last thing we need is a poster child for wingnut rants against public assistance. Because Nadya Suleman is like the living embodiment of Ronald Reagan's mythical welfare queen in the Cadillac -- a symbol that has been used to rail against a role of government in making the lives of a country's citizens better during tough times for a generation.

For Nadya Suleman is likely to be a textbook case of the assholes ruining it for everyone:
A big share of the financial burden of raising Nadya Suleman's 14 children could fall on the shoulders of California's taxpayers, compounding the public furor in a state already billions of dollars in the red.

Even before the 33-year-old single, unemployed mother gave birth to octuplets last month, she had been caring for her six other children with the help of $490 a month in food stamps, plus Social Security disability payments for three of the youngsters. The public aid will almost certainly be increased with the new additions to her family.

Also, the hospital where the octuplets are expected to spend seven to 12 weeks has requested reimbursement from Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program, for care of the premature babies, according to the Los Angeles Times . The cost has not been disclosed.

Word of the public assistance has stoked the furor over Suleman's decision to have so many children by having embryos implanted in her womb.

"It appears that, in the case of the Suleman family, raising 14 children takes not simply a village but the combined resources of the county, state and federal governments," Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten wrote in Wednesday's paper. He called Suleman's story "grotesque."

On the Internet, bloggers rained insults on Suleman, calling her an "idiot," criticizing her decision to have more children when she couldn't afford the ones she had, and suggesting she be sterilized.

"It's my opinion that a woman's right to reproduce should be limited to a number which the parents can pay for," Charles Murray wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Daily News. "Why should my wife and I, as taxpayers, pay child support for 14 Suleman kids?"

She was also berated on talk radio, where listeners accused her of manipulating the system and being an irresponsible mother.

"From the outside you can tell that this woman was playing the system," host Bryan Suits said on the "Kennedy and Suits" show on KFI-AM. "You're damn right the state should step in and seize the kids and adopt them out."

Suleman's spokesman, Mike Furtney, urged understanding.

"I would just ask people to consider her situation and she has been under a tremendous amount of pressure that no one could be prepared for," Furtney said.

A call to Suleman's publicist Mike Furtney was not immediately returned.

In her only media interviews, Suleman told NBC's "Today" she doesn't consider the public assistance she receives to be welfare and doesn't intend to remain on it for long.


From the beginning of this entire affair, Suleman has in some ways been a grotesque living embodiment of Republican rhetoric. From the fetophile cred that implanting eight embryos and not doing selective reduction gives her to her embrace of good old fashioned capitalism that has made her agruably the first welfare recipient with a publicist to the self delusion that turns public assistance into something else simply by not thinking of it as public assistance in much the same way that George W. Bush turned his presidency into a success in his own mind simply by thinking of it that way, this is what you get when you put that kind of self-delusion and narcissism into a situation with the potential to become a human interest story.

Suleman is also a dilemma for the pro-choice as well, because while part of choice is choosing to have as many children as one wants, I don't see anyone even in the feminist blogosphere doing a passionate argument on Suleman's behalf. If we lived in a sane world, this would be a good opportunity to talk about how rights come with responsibilities, whether it's reproduction or gun ownership -- but we don't live in a sane world.

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7 Comments:
Blogger Mauigirl said...
This is a woman who obviously has issues. I blame the fertility specialists who implanted 8 embryos in the first place. If she had had all these children naturally I would shake my head at her irresponsibility. But this was a deliberate act and it was aided and abetted by medical specialists. Where did she even get the money to pay for these procedures? (I understand her first six children were also conceived this way). People who have fertility treatment should need to pass some kind of psychological test to ensure they are conceiving for the right reasons. (And yes, I realize people who have children naturally don't have to pass a test - but sometimes I feel as if they should!)
2/12/09, 7:18 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...
>I really hadn't wanted to write about this Angelina Jolie-obsessed nutjob....

Why bring me into it?
2/12/09, 9:16 AM  
Blogger Nan said...
Why mince words? This woman doesn't have issues -- she's flat out delusional, obviously mentally ill, and the state needs to step in while those babies are still in the hospital.
2/12/09, 9:39 AM  
Blogger Jayhawk said...
Not to mention the $1,000,000+ hospital bill that will fall on taxpayers and/or raise the cost of my medical insurance.
2/12/09, 11:14 AM  
Blogger Bob said...
She's an ethical problem for the left & the right, for social services & the greedy for-profit fertility industry, choicers & lifers. It's cruel & pointless to hate on her - those babies need everything. The first question is whether or not she is competent to raise them. But oh, she raises a whole lotta other issues. & her mother is crazy, too.
2/12/09, 3:46 PM  
Blogger spocko said...
Thanks for addressing this.
And thanks for putting it into a republican frame.

I wanted to discuss this with people but I didn't have a good frame.
2/12/09, 10:46 PM  
Blogger Shay said...
Fertility treatments cost an arm and a leg and she is on public assistance. Who paid for this? This is the question I really want answered because it certainly didn't come out of her pocket.
2/13/09, 1:04 AM  
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