Not much of an opinion???  Is she kidding?

And hey, wait a minute… I thought her show got cancelled.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s still out there somewhere, mopping the floor with the poor saps who call to ask for one of those opinions she doesn’t have.

Unbelievable.

 

I don’t see much "beauty" in todays world…even the hairdos are ugly.

 Oh, Yvonne, I do believe this is my new favorite quote!  May you someday be immortalized in some great book of wisdom.

"where are all those on here that support her and say we should just leave her alone…"

 

We’re still here, I guess.  Still horrified, still perplexed.

Early on — and I mean very early on, even before the horrid name "octomom" was coined — I was aghast at how quickly and gleefully people jumped on the bandwagon to condemn this woman.  All that talk about sending Protective Services in to take the kids away, get her tubes tied, lynch the doctor, change the laws… you name it.  We didn’t even know the woman’s name, fercrissakes.

I don’t know how satisfying it is now to the people who turned out to be right about this misguided young woman, but I’m still disturbed by how ready everybody was to burn her at the stake, long before the whole story came out.  And now that we know the whole story, we’re still not satisfied. 

That’s not a defense of Nadya Suliman.  It’s shining a small light on our own irrationality.

I don’t mind the cold weather at all.  It’s the lack of sunlight that beats the life out of me.  So, to the horror of all my environmentalist friends, every lightbulb in my house goes on as soon as the sun goes down.

I agree with holding the doctors responsible for adhering to some kind of ethical standard. Someone certainly dropped the ball (and most of Michael Jackson’s nose) in that particular case of plastic surgery gone bad. The role this woman’s doctors played in this pregnancy begs similar questions. It’s the call to getting the government involved (e.g., CPS) that spooks me, and some of the sweeping statements made here about a woman none of us knows. There’s also the assertion that a psychological test is in itself ethical to determine who should be allowed to have children. Honestly? I suspect there’d be a lot fewer people walking the Earth if sanity were a legal requirement for motherhood. :)

So what should CPS do with her? Force her to get her tubes tied? Let her keep only two or three of the kids? Coordinate mandatory hysterectomies for anyone who has more kids than they can support? Of course something is out of whack here, but I’m not about to lead the charge for that kind of intervention, including mental health tests to determine whether or not you should be allowed to become pregnant, naturally or otherwise. I’m willing to bet that none of us here would willingly submit our own lives and choices to this kind of public scrutiny, either.

Actually, I do try to be conscientious about these things, mostly because I’m so appalled by other women’s inability to aim. But I’m not wiping up somebody else’s pee. Sometimes I kick the seat up (not touching it on a bet) before I assume The Hover. :)

Public nut-scratching. Eww.

I’m so sorry, Chrome, but I don’t care how clean it looks. There is no way I’m sitting on a public toilet seat. I’d sooner choose to explode. I should probably also warn you that I flush with my shoe…

The dollar amount is jaw-dropping, to be sure, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing. We needed to see those two million people in the streets of Washington and on that mall, and the countless millions more who gathered to watch in schools and bars and on jumbo-trons in the streets all over the country, celebrating a new beginning for this nation. Just the sight of that reaffirmed for me that the divisions of Red/Blue, Left/Right, and Black/White are no longer what we want to define us as Americans. I’m not so naive as to think that our troubles are over. I’m sure we’ll always find things over which to disagree — with passion, with vehemence, and even with violence. But what I saw yesterday was a nation eager to embrace a noble ideal: that America is, by and large, a vast community of good and decent human beings, and that it is possible for a diverse nation to find common ground. If the celebrities and individual citizens with the deepest pockets were happy to pick up the tab for the parties, they have my enduring thanks.

Oh, there’s always another side. You’re wise to notice. Many of the King children’s lawsuits — against each other as well as outsiders — claim that they own the rights to the MLK name, likeness, and everything associated with it. Any profits from the sale of merchandise should go to the MLK Center in Atlanta, they say, for admin costs, programs, upkeep, and other expenses. After the election, the “kids” tried to stop T-shirt vendors in Atlanta to stop them from selling items that featured Obama and MLK images on them. There was a big unflattering story about this in the NY Times that weekend after the election. It should be easy enough to find if you’re interested. I suppose this makes sense in some technical, legal, anal sort of way, but I’m not sure I buy the story that all of the money does or should go “to support the Center”. I don’t understand, either, how they can lay claim to every single photograph, document, or other item that’s in any way associated with MLK. If I took a picture of him, I own the copyright to that picture, and they’d need to ask my permission to use it. It’s not the other way around.

>> “There should be a salary cap on how much people can make. The rest of the profit should be dispersed to the rest of us and to the government.” Sorry, Ann Marie, I know you mean well, but this was the basis of communism… and we all know how that turned out.

Jayne, It’s very possible that that’s what’s *right* with your son’s generation! I find it positively awe inspiring that so many of today’s young people don’t see race as “a big deal.” Fortunately for them, they have no personal memories or experience of the days in which so many people were openly racist, when schools were segregated by law or by circumstance, when white people couldn’t marry black people, when absolute atrocities were committed against people for no other reason than the color of their skin, and that these acts were — incredibly — quite commonplace. Those attitudes and behaviors are, sadly, not completely erradicated, but your son’s words portend a huge step in the right direction. Personally, I can’t wait to hear what your grandchildren will do!

Cinnamon buns — very likely it’s the touch of vanilla, which is reminiscent of the scent of breast milk.

I came to the realization recently that your eyes start to go right around the time the skin on your face starts getting weird. Maybe that’s nature’s idea of being merciful and keeping us socially engaged. If we saw what was really happening, we might never leave the house again. The best beauty trick, then, is to stop renewing your eyeglass prescription.