White ladies have a bunch of kids and get TV shows. A Hispanic woman pumps out eight babies and gets scorn – and maybe a few high-profile interviews.

Darter notes that audiences love white women with lots of kids; think Cheaper By The Dozen and John & Kate Plus Eight. Even the Duggars are getting a TV show. Well, you're thinking, those are families and Suleman is a single mom! Darter says:

Let's not forget the sexism –- how can a woman raise that many kids without a bread winner, without a brawny man to bring home the bacon?

With regards to the race issue, Darter might be on to something; commenters on an LA Times story about Suleman wrote things like:

Does anyone know if the mother is "Legal"? I still remember the last story the Los Angeles Times ran about the illegal alien mom who used fertility drugs and ended up with 10 kids, all at California Taxpayer expense.

And:

I heard she's an illegal and we the taxpayers are gonna foot the bill. For the rest of their lives!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The truth is, what color this woman is does not matter. What does matter is that she is unemployed; seems to think that "going back to school" will feed her children; plans to raise 14 babies using school loans and denies that she is on welfare — though she will admit that she is on "public assistance," i.e. foodstamps. Plus, three of her first six children are disabled and receiving federal assistance. (She doesn't consider this to be welfare.)

As explained on the Today show this morning (see clip above), Suleman says she has spent close to $100,000 on IVF treatments, and used to receive disability payments for an on-the-job injury, but that money has since dried up. Right now, she has no income. She receives $490 a month in food stamps. Andrew Sullivan quotes Heather Mac Donald of the Secular Right, who says: "The nine-week premature octoplet's delivery required 46 doctors, nurses, and assistants; in twelve days, their care has likely cost at least $300,000 and counting."

People are disgusted with her because she seems selfish and clueless, not because of her race. And they're grossed out by the Duggars, too. Trust. Part of the problem is the terrible economic climate, and the nation's sudden aversion to anything that seems greedy. (Remember what Helen Fisher said last week?) What seems greedier than scientifically creating a bevy of tiny beings with your DNA — more than you can possibly carry by yourself? (One commenter on Racialicious notes, "Every time I hear about people going to extreme lengths to have biological children, I think about the teenagers on heartgallery" — a website of children who have lived in the foster system the longest.)

In any case, it turns out that Nadya Suleman's father is Iraqi and her mother is Ukrainian. She was thought to be Hispanic due to keeping her ex-husband's last name after the divorce (he was Hispanic; her former last name was Gutierrez). So the Los Angeles paranoia over her being some kind of Latin "illegal" is, sadly, unsurprisingly, ignorant.

Instead of focusing on skin color — or lack thereof — maybe we should focus on the irrationality of blind faith? Because while Suleman, who says, "I do believe wholeheartedly that God will provide in his own way," refused to reduce embryos, Heather Mac Donald writes:

If you are a radical pro-lifer and believe that every artificially-conceived embryo must be brought to term, no fertility treatments for you unless you are prepared to bankroll all the resulting medical costs yourself. Either accept your God-given condition of infertility or accept a human condition on the man-made science for overcoming that infertility: use within reason.

Unmarried nonwhite woman's crapload of babies not considered "little gifts from God" [Racialicious]
Octuplets Backlash [LA Weekly]
About Those Octuplets [Andrew Sullivan]
Octuplets' mother receives public assistance [UPDATED] [LA Times]
Life, death, science, and family values [Secular Right]
Related: VIDEO-OctoMom And Doctor From Two Years Ago

• Laura Bush gave a speech about Burma a.k.a. Myanmar and disaster preparedness and Jenna's wedding. Her lipstick was very well-applied. More than 10,000 people may die as a result of the cyclone. Harry built a limestone altar in Texas especially for the wedding. It will be "permanent" in contrast to many of the structures in Myanmar, where limestone and most other things are in short supply. The ruling junta is holding a referendum this weekend to solidify its control of their dirt- poor, isolated disaster zone and I guess this means they win. Governments that are more efficient when it comes to killing citizens than warning about floods always win in the short term. And also the medium term. [Huffington Post]
  
• Hey, speaking of nuptials/Third World personalities! Mariane Pearl might be Angelina Jolie's maid of honor. [Times Of India]
  
• The primary was so ugly, John and Cindy McCain couldn't bring themselves to vote for a candidate in 2000. [Huffington Post]
  
• Kind of similar situation with John and Elizabeth Edwards and Hillary and Obama. [TPM]

• A nun says Catholics like Hillary Clinton because they want to stick it to the Catholic Church for being so sexist. [Slate]
• Do you ever think how maybe back in the eighties Michelle Obama made a pact with Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan and Stokley Carmichael aka Kwame Toure to groom a charismatic neo Malcolm X figure only so they could later sacrifice him when he became too powerful and universally respected like something out of Malcolm X or like the Bible? Me neither, but that's sort of what Chris Hitchens seems to be saying. [Slate]
• The Rush Limbaugh Hillary Clinton lovefest is kind of cute in that sickening way true love is always kind of sickening. [Rush]
• Oh great now Germany is getting our jobs? [Indy Star]
• If you haven't been on food stamps or some other form of welfare yet you might as well go out tonight and pair an extravagant meal with an expensive bottle of wine because in all likelihood you are someday going to be impoverished, friends; just know it happens to the best 75% of us. [UPI]