Another good Suleman piece

Tim Rutten's got a great article in the LA Times today: The excesses of Nadya Suleman

The last couple paragraphs are worth reproducing in their entirety:

When the Nadya Sulemans of the world say, as she has in interviews, that they undergo these extreme, invasive, unpleasant, uncertain and expensive medical procedures because they "want children," that isn't really the case. If what people want is children -- and the incomparable experience of parenthood -- there are tens of thousands of children in our country and perhaps millions more abroad waiting for adoption. Thousands of others in our country are waiting for foster care.

The impulse that has made fertility medicine such a large and lucrative specialty in American medicine is about something other than children; it's about the narcissistic assumption that one is "entitled" to "the experience" of childbearing and, more to the point, the notion that, somehow, if your particular strands of DNA don't live on into another generation, the species will be poorer for it.

That sense of entitlement and its enabling delusion are about a lot of things -- but none of them really involve children.

Morality and Babies

The Morality of Eight Babies or, Sometimes, Even One

This post by Valerie Tarico is an excellent piece that offers some sincere balance to Holstein's post on the subject of 14-baby lady.

Unlike Tarico, I was not raised fundamentalist, or with any religion for that matter. But I have always felt a very deep sense of faith and spirituality, and I believe that ethics and morality have been central to my identity and actions throughout my life. I agree wholeheartedly with her that progressive minded people too often cower in the shadow of fundamentalist morality rather than championing their own, and that it's high time we stopped forgetting that morality happens to be at the center of our beliefs and actions too.

Where's Jonathan Swift when you need him?

I've been waiting for a good comedic slamming of Miss 14-Baby Bellflower for a few days now, and finally I've found one! I'm sure there will be many more to come, but this is a nice start.

SHUT THAT VAGINA DOWN

Emphasis on "High Definition"

The following is a brief blurb from the Associated Press about a cable debacle during yesterday's Superbowl:

Cable provider apologizes for Super Bowl porn
by Arthur H. Rotstein

TUCSON, Ariz (AP)-- A cable television provider has apologized to Tucson-area customers over a 30-second porn interruption during the Super Bowl. Philadelphia-based Comcast issued a brief statement Monday saying the company is "mortified" and is conducting a thorough investigation.

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury says the initial investigation suggests that the interruption was an "isolated, malicious act."

The company says only customers in the Tucson area receiving the standard definition feed--not high definition--were affected.

Tucson media outlets reported that they received calls from irate viewers about the porn, which aired just after the Arizona Cardinals' Larry Fitzgerald scored on a long touchdown reception during the game's final minutes.

What got my attention is the sentence explaining that only customers "receiving standard definition feed--not high definition" had the problem. I don't know if the purpose of that sentence was a marketing push for viewers to start using high def, or to re-emphasize that at least those who were exposed to the porn didn't have to see it in high definition, but either way it gave me a good chuckle.

Dr. Jill

LA Times article on Dr. Biden's new teaching job


Given my own community college roots, and the fact that I also hope to teach at a community college someday after earning my PhD in education, I was quite happy to see that Jill Biden has found a new teaching position at Northern Virginia Community College.

Other than the incredibly annoying and patronizing comment so typical of Amy Sullivan included in the article, this is actually a nice discussion of Biden's work and the ongoing debate over the use of the term "Dr."---which, by the way, is very standard within academic circles and not at all uncommon (however pompous it might seem in other contexts).