I was asked about Oscar-winner Natalie Portman’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar and I am glad she will marry her baby’s father. However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not “slam” or “attack” Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country. My comments were about the statistical reality that most single moms are very poor, under-educated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death. That’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that society often glorifies and glamorizes the idea of having children out of wedlock.
So among the other strange and contradictory things Mike Huckabee is going around saying these days, he does not see his comments about grown adult actress Natalie Portman, engaged to be married to a grown adult man (who happens to be out in the public eye because she was awarded numerous prizes for her job) as a completely different sort of "unwed mother" than, say Bristol Palin, out in the public eye to glorify her famous redneck, "Christian" politician mother, pregnant at 16 with no real intention to marry the father of this abstinence ooops baby? Really? It seems to me that if anyone was going around "glorifying" unwed motherhood - it was Sarah Palin, not Natalie Portman or the media.
Not to mention that there is a big difference between single mothers and unwed mothers. Many single mothers have been left or widowed and did not have their children without "benefit" of marriage. However, our society and laws do not always protect them financially and many of them do end up needing public assistance. If Mike Huckabee was really interested in helping these women and their children he should be coming up with childcare and health care for the kids, decent and equitable pay for their mothers and better enforcement of support by the fathers of the children.
But Mike Huckabee and his gang are not really interested in so solving the problems, are they? They are just really good at pointing the finger at the other guy and laying on judgment.
3 comments:
Republicans in general seem to be very concerned about the baby before its born and then not so much afterwards. Shameful.
What hokgardner said. Verbatim.
It's a part of the whole "love the fetus, despise the child" philosophy of the repugs. My hairdresser was slamming teenagers who get pregnant and said that of course we taxpayers get to pay the bill. I said simply that I don't want babies and children going hungry and then she replied that she didn't either. I don't think she had ever thought through what her repug philosophy really meant to real people.
Post a Comment