Mike Huckabee Attacks Natalie Portman For "Glamorizing" Single Motherhood

Apparently Mike Huckabee has learned nothing from the mistakes of his Republican predecessors. On a radio show this week, Huckabee criticized Natalie Portman for sending the message that it’s okay to have a child “out of wedlock,” because attacking Murphy Brown went so well for Dan Quayle nearly two decades ago.

On The Michael Medved Show, the host responded to Portman thanking her fiancé Benjamin Millepied in her Oscars acceptance speech. She said Millepied, “choreographed the film, and has now given me my most important role of my life.” Medved counters that he “didn’t give her the most wonderful gift, which would be a wedding ring! And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic.”

According to Media Matters, which posted a transcript, Huckabee responded:

You know Michael, one of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re having children, we’re not married, but we’re having these children, and they’re doing just fine.’ But there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.

You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids — across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering.

First of all, Portman isn’t really a “single mother” since she’s in a committed relationship with her baby’s father. Bristol Palin, however, is a single mother, but of course she shouldn’t be shamed because she’s a hero for “choosing life.”

Since Huckabee believes women shouldn’t even have a choice about abortion, what exactly did he want Portman to do? She’s never declared in an interview that it’s better to get pregnant before you’re married, but apparently she’s “glamorizing” the practice simply by continuing to live her movie star life. Rather than dressing up and attending the Academy Awards, Portman should have sat home on Oscars night crying her eyes out over the horrible shame she’s inflicted on her family. Or perhaps she should’ve taken a cue from “old Hollywood” and gone “on vacation” for a few months, then passed her lovechild off to a family member.

The one good thing we can say about Huckabee, a rumored 2012 presidential candidate, is that he isn’t compromising his principals just to get votes. There are probably many Americans who agree that Portman should be condemned, but it’s not like they were going to vote for Obama. As for the unwed parents of 41 percent of American babies, those heathens are probably liberals anyway. But we still doubt that his attack on Portman will go over well with the millions of Americans who watch her movies and plan to buy magazines featuring the first photos of her adorable bastard child.

Huckabee Attacks Natalie Portman For Glamorizing “Out Of Wedlock Births” [Media Matters]