Working the 911 System

It seems no matter how hard she cries or screams that she doesn't want to be treated as a celebrity (this being stated on her website and in web video blogs) mother of 14, Nadya Suleman insists that she's just a 'normal mother' who wants to be left alone and isn't looking for special treatment. I guess that's why she's got an exclusive deal with a website (whose link I will not include so as not to spur on her web fame) which covers her daily in her quest to love and care for her 14 children despite the fact that she's single, jobless and living with her parents.

It's pretty hard to go anywhere without hearingn some news or the other about her and it seems that she did it again with the revelation that a few weeks prior to giving birth to the octuplets that shot her into the public's eye, Suleman had called 911 after one of her previous six children went missing. According to Suleman she couldn't find the child and overreacted and ended up calling 911 in order to mobilize the police and authorities to search for her child. Of course the child was safe and sound and had wandered out of the house and came back on his own after doing whatever it was that sent him out of the house in the first place.

Now there are two things that surprise me with this case. Firstly, I know it's impossible to keep an eye on kids all the time but isn't it telling that with only six kids she managed to 'lose' one for a short period of time. Does she honestly think that the job will get easier with the advent of 8 more? Secondly, is it right for her to get a proverbial slap on the wrist for writing off the problem by saying she had 'raging hormones' due to being pregnant with her octuplets. Is that an excuse? Well then why can't the woman in Florida who got arrested for making a false 911 call this past week be treated the same way?

In case you didn't hear about this event, in a nutshell, a woman went to McDonalds to order chicken McNuggets. When the cashier informed her (after the woman paid for her meal) that there were no more McNuggets and that they would give her a McDouble meal in lieu of the McNuggets. Not content with the offer, the woman began to complain and then proceeded to call 911 to complain there that McDonalds was... well... doing something illegal. When told by the 911 operator that not getting McNuggets was not reason to call 911 the woman began to rant and rave that it most certainly was. She was arrested shortly thereafter.

Now if her lawyers were smart they would plead that she too was pregnant or had raging hormones and that's what led her to act the way she did. I'm sure if it was a man who tried to use that defense he would be laughed out of town and thrown in jail for the requisite amount of time with no delay but in this case are we really to believe that an irrational and irresponsible woman like Nadya Suleman would have an excuse? I'll say this for her, she's certainly not using her 8 newborns to her advantage. No sir; not at all.