Suleman and the Eight Baby Circus

You're sitting at home on your couch, feet up after a long day, flipping through channels on your TV. There's nothing on MTV and TMZ doesn't come on again until 11:30 p.m., so you're forced to watch the evening news. But, lucky for you, there's an O.J. Simpson-like chase on and you can't stop watching.

This, more or less, is the basis for our fixation with Nadya Suleman, an out-of-work Los Angeles native and single mother of six, who gave birth to octuplets on Jan. 26, and has since been criticized, loathed and threatened. By now, the American public knows this story. We have formed our opinions, picked the label, placed the tag and as much as we may scrutinize the choices and life-style of this woman, we quietly love her for these same reasons.

Suleman is no longer just an irresponsible mother of 14, she is a train wreck - a slow-speed chase on the evening news and a gift from the reality TV show gods. As ignorant as her actions seem to be, we as a society cannot change the channel, and three weeks after she popped out number eight, there isn't a story the media hasn't written about her. At press date, Suleman's name pulls 918,000 results from the search engine Google, ranging from New York Times articles to blog posts on Scandalist.com.

She has now become a public figure and this is her 15 minutes of fame. The trade off is that the same spotlight she put herself under is burning her. According to the Associated Press, Suleman has received over 500 threats that are currently being investigated by the Los Angles Police Department. Yet, Suleman proves that the saying, there is no such thing as bad press, is undoubtedly true. Any attention she receives, whether good or bad, just gives her more to say. With every threat made against her, she gains more and more empathy from the public, and every prime-time television interview the media allows only extends her celebrity shelf life.

The sad truth is that Suleman will probably get offers from reality TV executives, and when that happens, if it hasn't already, the public will undoubtedly tune in. Ratings will be high but, eventually, just like any slow-speed chase, it will have to end, and we will move on to the next disaster because that is the American way.

"I don't agree at all with her or her decisions," said Brett Neuner, a philosophy major at Valley College. "But, if she was to get her own reality TV show, I'll admit that I will be the first to watch it."

We are a tabloid nation that is obsessed with people like Suleman. Though we may deny it, we need her as much as she seems to need the attention, because she reminds us that despite all of our flaws, there is always someone worse off than we are at any moment. The longer we feed her the attention, the longer we put off the inevitable - the quick descent from the top and crushing weight of being faced with the reality of raising 14 kids on her own. Just as violence breeds violence, the more notoriety we give her the more appealing we make it for others like her to do the same, considering only the fame and not the final cost.