Octuplets Mother Descended Quickly From Miracle Mom to Internet Target Of Scorn,
But in short order the public learned that Miracle Mom was also Single Mom, Unemployed Mom and Welfare Mom. And as fast as you could Twitter “I hate Nadya Suleman,” scores of Web sites were dedicated to denouncing the so-called Octomom, others to making fun of her, a rap music video lampooned her (“pops em out like a toaster/needs a pacifier holster”) and angry citizens threatened to kill her publicists.
“In terms of reaction to her, I would say not in my experience have I ever seen anything like it. And I would add that I was involved in public relations for Three Mile Island after the accident,” said publicist Mike Furtney, who quit representing Suleman after receiving death threats. (Lest anyone forget, the Three Mile Island accident of 1979 involved the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor that for a time threatened to prompt the evacuation of a wide swath of Pennsylvania.)
Not that Suleman is the first person to go radioactive overnight. Dont forget O.J. Simpson.
But as pop culture historian Leo Braudy points out, Suleman has never been accused of killing anybody.
“This is not something that is usually considered a crime,” Braudy, who teaches at University of Southern California, said of giving birth to children. “Its something that in the past was celebrated. People would say congratulations.”
Of the nearly 50 Suleman discussion groups found on facebook.com this week, however, not one was headlined “Congratulations, Nadya!”
Instead there were titles like, “Nadya Suleman Should Be Sterilized,” “Nadya Suleman Disgusts Me,” and “Stop Idiot Moms Like Nadya Suleman.” (And those were the printable ones.)
To be fair, there were also a handful of pro-Suleman groups, although the “Leave Nadya Suleman Alone” one had only 64 members on Tuesday compared with the 3,530 people who had joined the “What Nadya Suleman Did Was Totally Wrong” group.
Although never venerated as a candidate for mother of the year, Suleman was, for about two days after the Jan. 26 birth of her octuplets, more the subject of curiosity than of ridicule and scorn.
That began to change as it became known she was a single mother with 14 children who was living on a combination of food stamps, student loans and disability claims while her elderly mother, who was caring for Sulemans six older children, couldnt make her mortgage payments.
It didnt help, either, that Sulemans own parents have publicly criticized her decision to have so many kids, or that Suleman bears a striking resemblance (some speculate a plastic-surgery-enhanced one) to that other famous mother, Angelina Jolie, and that shes been said to be looking for book, TV and movie deals.
That prompted Los Angeles Times blogger Elizabeth Snead to joke that Suleman, like Jolie, might someday become a U.N. goodwill ambassador.
Elsewhere on the Web, Jodie Rivera, a popular YouTube parody singer known as VenetianPrincess, put up a video of herself looking eerily like Suleman. As she sang, a doctor in scrubs (also Rivera) used a baseball glove to catch flying newborns.
“It was all in good fun, to bring a laugh to a situation people are taking very seriously,” said Rivera who herself acknowledges she doubts Suleman is capable of caring for 14 children and perhaps should give some up for adoption.
The site momlogic.com, which provides both lighthearted and serious reports on motherhood, also got into the act, offering eight suggestions for reality shows Suleman might do. One example: “Fear Factor: Octuplets Edition,” in which contestants are lowered by harness into the Suleman home.
“Whoever can demonstrate the guts and determination to endure one round of octuplet diaper changes wins the grand prize – a lifetime supply of birth control.”
Some people have offered to help Suleman, including a church pastor, a nonprofit and even the man who says he was a sperm donor for her when they were dating in the 1990s. Although Suleman has denied that Denis Beaudoin is the sperm donor who fathered her children, he told ABC he still stands ready to help.