Liz Farrell is the editor of Lowcountry Current. She is a native Bostonian and a graduate of Gettysburg College. She is excellent at wasting time, loves to drink coffee and read, and has made Google-Image-stalking Tom Selleck a real pastime.I have finally found the one thing that we, as a diverse group of Americans, can all agree on. Well, two things really. The first is that “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” was the most underrated film of 1986 (nobody cleans up like Nick Nolte), and the second is that Nadya Suleman — the single mom of six who recently gave birth to in-vitro octuplets (despite not having a job or a non-foreclosed-on home to live in) — is a brand-new kind of crazy.
And we, as a nation of bored fools, can’t seem to get enough of it.
A crowd gathers in the driveway of the home of the octuplets’ mom Nadya Suleman, in La Habra, Calif., as she arrived home Tuesday night with two of her babies. Photo by Lou Ponsi/McClatchy Tribune News Service
Personally, I made a grand effort to protect myself from gaining any knowledge of the Octomom. For several weeks I tried to ignore the headlines and resulting debate, determined to let the woman fade into 15-minute oblivion with the likes of the Pregnant Transsexual Man, Joey Buttafuoco’s pants and Hulk Hogan’s singing daughter. I wanted to expend no energy thinking about her plight or the ridiculousness of her situation. Plus, my brain’s allotted space for non-critical information has been booked solid for months thanks to things like Facebook status messages and the plot twists of the new “90210.”
But it was a difficult topic to avoid. Nice people would try to make pleasant conversation about her. “Can you believe the Octomom had six embryos implanted in her and that she lives with her mother?,” they would say, and I’d snarl, “Who cares? That’s her problem.” And then I’d saunter away as though I were better than that, as if I wouldn’t immediately write a column about it or something.
Call it cynicism, but I had the Octomom’s equation figured out even before I heard she’d hired a publicist. You can work out the math on a chalkboard: The exploitation and shameless product hustling of TLC’s “Jon and Kate Plus Eight,” minus the debt-free love, stability and seemingly genuine nature of “18 Kids and Counting” equals “These Babies Are My Meal Ticket, and Mommy Wants Some Free Cribs and Her Very Own Reality Show.”
Sure, it took a minute for everyone to catch on. I could hear the sirens of the morality police in the distance, but they seemed to be circling the block until, finally, people went from “Yay, an octuplet miracle!” to “Say what, now?”
Naturally, it was appalling. Could it really be that this woman with her taxpayer-supported personal decisions is already looking to do a reality show? Aren’t these things supposed to happen organically? Are we really allowed to manufacture a large and unsupported family for fame and free stuff?
The Internet rumor mill says the Octomom is, in fact, shopping for the right reality show deal as we speak, but I’ve also read that she says she’s not in the market for one — that is, unless her kids want it, because she’s going to ask them and see what they think. Let’s guess how that conversation will go:
Octomom: Look! There’s a pile of brand-new Barbies and Thomas the Tank Engine sets in the corner!
Kids: Yay!
Octomom: But they’re only for employees of my new company Film My Kids for Toys and Money Inc. You guys aren’t employees ... but I am hiring.
Without a doubt, Suleman is what would happen to Michael Jackson were he to have his own uterus.
And what’s worse, her appearance seems to be based on a bad movie plot wherein Angelina Jolie goes to a kids’ birthday party only to have a magical clown do a sloppy caricature portrait that ends up coming to life and mass-producing children.
Knowing all of this and knowing that people have TP’d her house and are standing on her street corner holding homemade signs that say things like “Get UR tubes tied!” and “Don’t have more kids for money!” you might think I’d advocate against a reality show deal for her. But no, I think she should get one. If anyone needs a national NannyCam, it’s this dame.