MORFORD: God Does Not Want 16 Kids

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 10/19/5 | Mark Morford

[SmithL]

Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe?

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, the kids ranging in ages from one to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child

as they suck the skin from each other's Scientological faces...

[isrul]

"18 spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people "

That's the problem with them according to the author. He's obviously a bigot and a racist and of course, a deranged liberal.

[darkangel82]

That may be the most disgusting screed I've ever seen published in a "legitimate" newspaper. But then, I'm only 58 years old.

I'm only in my 20s and this is the worst drivel I've ever read.

[darkangel82]

His vomitous gutter shot would have already been paved over and made into a four-lane highway by the RKBA.

That would be a lot cheaper than using federal highway funds.

[Marysecretary]

I think it's because the two older kids gang up on the youngest. And then there's the middle child who thinks everone gets the perks but him. Hmmmm. Such a mystery. We had four in my family--two girls and two boys-- and NONE of us ever got along.

[kmiller1k]

I saw the documentary on Discovery Channel and in it they say they are Pentacostal. The dresses and long hair on the girls is the giveaway. They look like a very happy family.

[Marysecretary]

Oh, good! The long dresses aren't always indicative of that, but I know pentacostal young children who dress modestly and have long dresses. They mostly homeschool. They're just a neat family, no matter what religion they are. Maryxxx