On Large Families and Idiotic San Francisco Chronicle Columnists

Via Jonathan we have this lovely column.

Here are some of the highlights:

Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?

And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain when you say that -- isn't more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by "touching" and races right past "disturbing" and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into "Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?"

But that would be, you know, mean. Mean and callous to suggest that this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarre Duggar family of 18 spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair,{...}

t's wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that's making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it?

{...}Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words -- assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?

{...}Ah, but this is America, yes? People should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want with their families if they can afford it and if it's within the law and so long as they aren't gay or deviant or happily flouting Good Christian Values, right? Shouldn't they? Hell, gay couples still can't openly adopt a baby in most states (they either lie, or one adopts and the other must apply as "co-parent"), but Michelle Duggar can pop out 16 kids and no one says, oh my freaking God, stop it, stop it now, you thoughtless, selfish, baby-drunk people.

No, no one says that. That would be mean.

By all means, go and read the whole thing. If for no other reason than that it's really enlightening, in a, "Wow, do you think this bozo is representative of the average San Franciscan?" sort of way.

I'll admit to bias on this one. I mean, it's not like I can really avoid it, eh? It's not like I chose to have seven other siblings, but considering I'm number eight, I should just shut up and thank my lucky stars that the folks decided to have one more while they were at it, eh? So, I am biased, but I can't be the only one who finds it just a wee bit ironic that this obviously lefty columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle has become judgmental about someone's sex life? Because when someone asks you if you have kids, they are, in essence, asking about your sex life. Children, after all, are the product of sex. Ergo, Mr. Morford is criticizing the Duggar's sex life. Which is ironic given the subject matter of Morford's recent columns. He's all about advertising the sexual diversity of San Fran. and that's fine with me. San Fran wouldn't be San Fran without all of that. Yet when your sex life doesn't include birth control, well, according to Morford, that's just wrong! And selfish! And it just means the world is coming to an end, I swear to fucking GOD, because it's an omen that the Midwestern Neo-Christers are going to take over!

Which is just dumb. Not just because the rhetoric is just fucking trite, but because it's illogical. If you're going to stand up and scream for the rights of leather daddies to do their thing, well, then you should advocate the right of a woman to have a sixteen kids and to still want more. If no one's getting hurt, where's the harm? It's pretty simple, eh? Live and let live. I thought that's what you wacky San Franciscans were all about.

Just one more thing. Arkansas is not in the Midwest. It's in the south. Perhaps one could make the assumption that people on the coasts should learn basic grade school American geography, but I wouldn't want to be too judgmental. That would be mean.

Posted by Kathy at October 19, 2005 11:35 PM | TrackBack