"Conservative principles! I don't have conservative principles!"

[elfs]

Bill O'Reilly went off on a rant last night about about Nadya Suleman, the woman who just had octuplets after receiving fertility drugs, eight babies who add to her already overburdened brood of six children, all living in a three-room apartment. Suleman's relatives have said she's obsessed with having babies, has no visible means of support, and enjoys being "a professional student."

I think there's something wrong with Nadya Suleman. Oddly enough, though, I'm principled enough to think that Ms. Suleman, and her hive, should be allowed to muddle through existence without interference from the state.

But O'Reilly, in his Infinite Wisdom™, completely abandons every last conservative principle about women being allowed to have children, about people being allowed to make their own mistakes, and about the privacy that people should have to make their own decisions, as he goes into a tear about how The State should "do something," and "will do something" because public outcry is so loud. Bill O'Reilly wants The State to "do something" for these kids because he, in his Infinite Wisdom&trade, thinks that he knows better than Ms. Suleman what's right for her family and her children.

Does he and his pinhead (™ Bill O'Reilly) audience not understand that when you give the state the arbitrary power to make that decision without due process and without clear guidelines, when he allows the Wisdom of Repugnance (™ William Kass) to override the basic foundations of law and decency in this country? No, apparently not. O'Reilly apparently fails to understand the difference between public opprobrium and state interference. His repugnance is all that is necessary for him to engage the machinery of an armed institution.

Oh, and Ms. Suleman? It's not a clown car.

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

I would really like to know why the fertility drugs were prescribed, and who paid.

Medical ethics and competency. Maybe there was a good medical reason,but I can't guess what it was.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[(Anonymous)]

I've always been curious how much people like Rush and O'Reilly actually believe their own claptrap, and how much of it is a stage persona to appeal to a particular target audience. Sort of like Colbert without the irony.

Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

Limbaugh doesn't. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELRmgJw8muw)

Still, the cognitive dissonance in O'Riley's head must be astounding.

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Does he and his pinhead (™ Bill O'Reilly) audience not understand that when you give the state the arbitrary power to make that decision without due process and without clear guidelines, when he allows the Wisdom of Repugnance (™ William Kass) to override the basic foundations of law and decency in this country?

I believe that to Bill O'Reilly, due process and "public outcry" are the same thing. However, I'm of the opinion that the state should and must investigate whether this woman should be allowed to keep her children, because she seems to neither have the financial ability to take care of them, nor the physical venue to do so (a three bedroom location is not enough for 14 children by any stretch of mind). And her desire to be a "professional student" and continue to breed as much as she can points to a mental issue that may not make her very stable for raising her children.

But I don't think the kids should be dragged away, ala Texas, without an investigation first.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

The new kids will be in hospital care for a while.

Time to think about the options. No need for panic.

But the other six?

Does your idea of interference

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

include support? Although she should receive everything to which she and her children are legally entitled, I hope that nobody bends over backwards to do her any favors.

Except, of course, for the favor of monitoring the health and welfare of those children, and the sanity of their mother.

I wonder if she has the syndrome (I don't know its name) that makes a woman uninterested in her offspring once their past early childhood. Such women love infants and tiny children. They love pregnancy, but they don't really love kids with boundaries--kids who want to be real persons.

I'd hate to see the older kids just end up as nurses to the little ones or neglected altogether.

I read somewhere that her parents don't intend to help babysit any more.