Clown Car Vaginas

Step Right Up, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you...The Duggars!

Far be it for anyone to criticize the procreation choices of others, but our loopy fascination with multiple birth families shouldn't be this mystifying.

After all, with Jon and Kate and Nadia Suleiman current media sensations, the modern incarnation of the Dionne Quints suggests that we have yet to move beyond the most primitive freak-show preoccupation. Multiple media appearances with fawning interviewers marveling over the smiling mother's blessed fertility, cheery optimism and breezy insistence that this was "God's will", project to the world a charming naïveté that belies the sinister selfishness behind the fierce spawning of cascading progeny. Every sperm is, after all, sacred.

Make no mistake about it, spewing out as many children as you can is an act of willful aggression. The usual arguments that providence (or public assistance) will provide, or that the parents can afford to do it, or that the world's insatiable appetite for information about them will be a never-ending source of income, may all in fact be true. The belligerence of these actions are however wreaked on those of us who observe the proud parents with head-shaking disbelief.

In a world marked by dwindling resources, economic uncertainty, environmental degradation, we can hardly afford to take seriously the biblical approbation to be fruitful and multiply. Yet that seems to be the draw of families with all those kids running around. How are we to seriously address issues such as poverty, inequality and teenage pregnancy when the media exults over the Duggars and the Gosselins? We profess to be appalled at teenage mothers and 30 year old grannies in the inner city or Appalachia but yet we exult over the actions of people who crank kids for shiny faced exhibition on the Today Show.

The carny element to the spectacle is undeniable. The Duggars may be alternatively charming or appalling depending on your point of view, but they are essentially a short step above the Elephant Man or the bearded lady in curiosity and relevance.