OK, not actually—not yet, at least—unless you believe
Jimmy Kimmel.
But let’s all admit that this is what we’re anticipating here, this is what we’re waiting for: that the trainwreck that is Nadya “Octuplet Mom” Suleman will get trainwreckier in the trainwreckiest way possible. She’ll get pregnant again.
Kimmel-as-Suleman is a not-that-over-the-top approximation of the original, who, instead of settling into a reassuring (to us, not to speak of the babies) cycle of feedings and diaper changes, seems to be more hysterical and media-hungry than maternal. At any moment, we sense, the narrative is going to jump the tracks.
Earlier this week,
Suleman called 911. “The paparazzi is trying to break down the garage door and they’re swarming the whole area,” she told the dispatcher. “This is not safe for any of the kids.” The frenzy followed her bringing home
two of her eight octuplets (the rest remain in the hospital for now).
(AP Image)
We already know how Suleman handles stress. Earlier this month, audio surfaced of Suleman’s late-2008
call to 911, when she briefly couldn’t find one of the six children she already had. “Oh God, I’m going to kill myself,” she ranted, sobbing and hyperventilating. This was not merely a parent in panic mode; it was full-on temporary insanity. (In fact, she said, “I’m going crazy” over and over again.) There is no way to listen to the five-minute-plus recording without thinking, “This is not safe for any of the kids.”
Of course, it’s easy to judge from a distance, but even those close to Suleman are… beyond concerned. Her second publicist, Victor Munoz, quit a couple weeks ago,
telling Us Weekly, “This woman is nuts… It's pretty much a free-for-all over there right now. They are freaking out right now.” (Her earlier representation, a husband-wife p.r. team, quit over death threats.)
Kaiser Permanente, the hospital that delivered her octuplets, actually delayed this week’s arrival of two of the newborns because Suleman’s home had
failed an inspection—a safety review Suleman didn’t even bother to show up for.
And the charity organization, Angels in Waiting, that has now committed to helping Suleman care for the brood, initially had to endure her doing something seriously insane:
She’d spurned their offer of help. According to the AP
, the founder of Angels in Waiting said that Suleman “appeared to lose interest in the group’s proposal when she was told… that a reality show and a biweekly press conference on the babies’ condition was out of the question due to their fragile immune systems.”
It stands to reason that if Angels in Waiting and attention-whore Suleman hadn’t come to an agreement, Kaiser Permanente would have had to continue to hold the babies hostage—refusing to release them into an unsafe environment. Now that the babies are coming home, a couple at a time, we’ve got a new hostage situation: Suleman and her brood held hostage in their home by the crush of paparazzi and rubberneckers.
And then, of course, there’s the worst hostage situation of all: 14 children who will all be stuck living together with a crazy lady who’ll clearly have no choice but to exploit them. For starters, she told Dr. Phil that she’d consider participating in a
“medical documentary,” whatever that means.
Looking back on her decision to have more children, she also told Dr. Phil that “I wasn't thinking rationally at the time”—as if making the complicated arrangements to seek additional in vitro fertilization was a fleeting lapse of judgment.
At least she has her excuse ready for when she gets pregnant again.
Guest Off the Grid blogger Simon Dumenco is the media columnist at Advertising Age. Read more of his writing here. He can be emailed at dumenco@gmail.com
