Blogs and Stories
Mother of All Disasters
TMZ.com
That picture of octuplets' mom's obscenely large bulge represents an epic pop culture meltdown.
Oh, no! Look what Demi Moore hath wrought. I never believed back in 1990 when I published Annie Leibovitz’s famed Vanity Fair cover picture celebrating the fecundity of a naked pregnant Demi Moore that it would spawn 19 years of star knock-off pictures that culminated in today's epic moment of pop-cultural collapse—the sight of octuplet mom Nadya Suleman on TMZ bearing her ballooning 16-legged implants to the world.
The worst thing about the Suleman story is the way the freak-hungry media has rewarded her delinquency every step of the way. The sit-down star interview with NBC’s Ann Curry, the magazine covers, the hype for her PayPal web site, the impending book deal. Suleman's duvet lips are in themselves an homage to all the photo spreads she has seen of Angelina Jolie whom she so closely resembles.
Movie stars today are as greedy for additional kids as bankers are for bonuses. It’s the new badge of authenticity.
Movie stars today are as greedy for more and more kids as bankers are for bonuses. It’s the new badge of authenticity. The problem is it's also a movie star myth that raising an ever-escalating tribe of screaming infants is no sweat, no cost, no impediment to doing absolutely what you want. They can do it because they can, but there's nothing cool about it for a single mom already freeloading on disability. (One of Gov. Sarah Palin's many missed opportunities was that she never told us how she was really coping backstage not just with GOP handlers drilling her with foreign affairs cliff notes, but the friction of a boot-faced pregnant teenager and a school-deprived seven-year-old made to tote around her dazed four-month-old baby brother.)
That's why I wanted to throw a shoe at Anderson Cooper's toothy blonde co-anchor Randi Kaye Monday night when, after Cooper's admirably deadpan account implying the many ways that Ms. Suleman was clearly deranged, Kaye gurgled to camera, "Oh, but come on, they ARE really cute, aren’t they?"
Yes, the eight tiny preemies are very sweet indeed, lying there in their ICU unit festooned with tubes to keep them alive. It’s why it’s so sad that these same cute babies will almost certainly have an array of lifelong medical complications or disabilities they don't deserve. Like many kids with disabilities they'd no doubt be valiant, but these will compete for love and care with three other siblings who've inherited disabilities due to their mother's reckless conduct, and they'll share with eight others their mother’s resources in utero and one-fourteenth of her attention (and childrearing budget) from now on.
Who’s going to want to do photo spreads on eight socially-deprived adolescents with learning disabilities raised by a crazy mother? P.S. Brad and Angelina will probably be split up by then, too.
Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
Geithner's Stock Plummeting
Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Sarah Drops the Act
Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
Sarah Palin, the Musical
Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
Hillary Finally Doffs Her Burqa
Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
WHY ARE YOU REWARDING HER WITH POSTING HER PICTURE???
You're feeding the narcissism that is at the bottom of her pathology.
I'm boycotting this site for 3 days, which is your usual cycle for main stories.
If her picture is not taken down, in any form, from your site after 3 days, I will boycott for another 3 days.
I hope others will join me. This is a matter for CA State Social Services, it should NOT be a media circus -- which is what this woman is counting on it being.
Mostly I agree with Ms. Brown's assessment here, but her phrase "bearing her ballooning 16-legged implants to the world" seems callous about what are, in truth, helpless babies. Of course, Ms. Brown may be among those who think that a baby is not a baby (i.e., alive and human) until it is actually born and separated from it mother. In which case, one can understand her attitude. Understand it, not approve it.
I'm as appalled as anyone at this woman and the irresponsibility of her decisions but what the hell do you know about her children on disability? This comment:
"but there's nothing cool about it for a single mom already freeloading on disability"
Those kids may be entitled to disability because, shock! they may be disabled and there's nothing about such support that's freeloading.
As to whether Ms. Suleman is in her right mind to have more children when three are on disability is another issue.
I love kids as much as the next person. I have several children myself and am enjoying my grandchildren immensely. On the other hand, I welcomed them into a stable, 2-parent, middle-class home and provided for their needs from my own income.
As my kids were growing up, several of their friends were being raised on welfare. I can tell you from first hand experience that there are alot of folks out there who know how to work that system. One way to game it is to either have more kids yourself, or to encourage your children to have children at an early age, while they are still living at home, so the money comes into the same household.
This Suleman gal is selfishly taking advantage of everyone around her. The features I see show that her mother is a primary caregiver for her existing 6 children. Of course, she is also taking advantage of the taxpayers and now she is soliciting assistance from any and all charities and kind-hearted individuals.
I agree with many of the others who have weighed in on this that little Ms. Nadya is one emotionally sick young lady - especially with the way her stories are being shown to contradict each other. I agree that the doctor who performed this IVF procedure was negligent - and perhaps the one who performed the prior one may have been likewise irresponsible.
The question I have is, where did she get the money for these procedures? IVF isn't cheap. She's on welfare. Did she get a job to earn the money (which may have disqualified her for welfare assistance)? If she didn't, did she receive an inheritance or a monetary gift? Did she get the money through illicit means? Trace the money and I'm sure we'll find more things that are not right with her story.
I promise you this. If she is able to turn this into a lucretive option, it's just a matter of time before we read about the next mentally-unhinged person going for 9, 10, or more babies at the same time - just for the attention and the cash, thanks to the media coverage and the lack of negative consequences.
I would suspect that social services is going to step in, and possibly take a few a way if she isn't keeping up, and pay a foster mother to take care of them.
It is never called a hand out when a foster mother is paid to take care of someone else's children.
And of course this is, in a way creative job creation so give her a break.
I am sure this story is being exploited everywhere, here and there, cause it is such a freak show.
The good news in this story is JoyMars is boycotting us :). Or so she says. We'll see.
This is a story that has social interest, is rather beastly, so I think it is allowed here :). You have my permission :)).
Lets get to do the disability issue, i have met people on the other side of the door, when I take my exams, and you know they are much nicer. If you forget your napsack they will run and give it to you and not steal everything in it first.
They treat you like you are smart not stupid.
They wave and remember your name.
Actually these people do make the world a better place and could teach people on the other side of the door how to be kinder, especially that security guard who appears to have to go out of his way to ask personal questions in the most demeaning way he can think of.
Humility is not a bad thing you know.
I thought at this time CA social services was on hold cause of a budget crisis.
So maybe these kids won't be placed somewhere that is out of sight and out of mind.
I understand California is the state where everyone is supposed to be beautiful and perfect, or else.
Is California the only place where medical ethics are thrown out the window? Even plastic surgeons are supposed to ascertain a patient's motives and mental stability before undergoing the knife. As a result of their mother's instability, these children will suffer. How terribly wrong this is on so many levels.
Quit talking about this dolt already.
EUGENICS! This why we, as a society & world, really need Eugenics... -just something to ponder.
And to disagree with Randi Kaye -- they are not cute.
The Daily Beast is not part of the freak-hungry media? C'mon! Ms. Brown happily exploits this photo for the attention she knows it will generate. It's so absurd when the media "reports" on disproportionate media coverage.
Ok, so why now. I have long been appalled by the media swoon over a dirt poor family birthing what was it, 7 infants? but there was no outrage. this women is as whacked as the others who felt compelled to boot out five and six and seven tots at a time. But then it was oh so cute, but why? B/c they had husbands i suppose.
And to that matter this stimulus package is a gift in heaven to this women and others like her that have no means to support the children they bring into the world. I hate to say it but liberals can't have it both ways. Either women wait to have kids until they can afford them, or we must pony up and pay, no matter one, two or 14. the message should be, have kids when you can afford to, period. and that needs to apply to everyone, not just to the mother and her 14 kids in a shoe.
I feel for the "babes" here, that is it.
My daughter is studying for her ACT SAT etc. We added a new word we hope not to use too much in the future "octuplets". Let's hope it ups her ACT score.
Does anyone else look at the picture and think "ouch"?
I assume TB's tongue was planted firmly in her cheek when she wrote that she "never believed" she would have spawned big tummy pictures of pregnant woman in 1990 with the cover of Vanity Fair. Ms. Brown strikes me as a person who loves being a trend setter so that either had to be a joke or a little disingenuous. Furthermore, her take on the media treatment of the mother of these babies would be more persuasive if the Daily Beast didn't do the same thing. Enough already. The woman craves public attention. She should spend every second of her life caring for those children and not trying to extend her 15 minutes. The future is not bright for those babies and I wish them the best.
We are all watching, writing, reading and discussing this issue as we all see what is sickeningly obvious. The exploitation of these children for financial gain has underscored every decision seemingly by thier mother from pre to post birth. Both the newly created website as well as her clearly well manicured acrylic nails as evidenced on the Today show when caressing the baby remind me of the lyric, "It's all about the Benjamin's baby....".
I think this woman story is that she has OCD, as does Angelina Jolie and Mia Farrow, to name a few. Instead of collecting elastics and newspapers (maybe they do), these woman are collecting babies, and maybe even children, if they finally stop giving birth.
It looks so unnatural, like a tumor.
This woman needs to be investigated for welfare fraud, if she paid for IVF she must have had cash. She's made herself the center of attention so CA should make her the poster child to prevent future abuse of the system. Her perception is so confused that she doesn't consider government payments for food "assistance".
Don't you think she had her lips done???
Oh and yes Tina, you get the award for best portrayal of this scene - now showing the freak "disaster of motherhood." Too funny....
Why are you illustrating this column with a carny sideshow photo? Your hypocrisy is stunning.
Skirts, abusive relationships, fat lady jokes, octuplets, orgasms, private schools -- this site is sinking quickly into a strange salacious salmagundi, no worth the time to pick through to find serious thinking and compelling writing. I give it three months.
The negatives first:
1. These children lack a mentally and emotionally healthy mother.
2. These children lack a responsible and committed father.
3. These children were deprived of the best possible start in life and that includes optimum intrauterine growth and nourishment.
4. Medically unethical. There was/is much harm being done.
5. IVF is immoral. We shouldn't be playing God. It creates all kinds of nightmare situations like this.
The positives:
None are apparent to me at this point.
In conclusion:
Once you have a baby, all its needs come first. If society can't agree on that then everything is meaningless. Nothing matters.
That last comment was pure gratuitous media cruelty.
Leave Brad and Angelina alone!
;)
Thank you.
As a first time user, your comment has been submitted for review. It can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or two for your comment to be reviewed, depending on the time of week and the volume of comments we receive.
Please log in to leave comments.