Octomom, death threats, public relations, and other despicable things

February 14, 10:18 PMDC Ethical Issues ExaminerLaura Harrison McBride

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Nadya Suleman

There is the ridiculous, and the sublimely ludicrous. Octomom having a public relations agent belongs to the latter category.

That public relations agent, Joann Killeen, said in a TV interview last week that she was getting death threats. Duh. She decides, possibly to pump her own fame, to represent the most reviled mother in decades (maybe ever) and then she feigns surprise at death threats? Please. Is she even smart enough to be a publicist?

The answer is probably, yes, and she is smart enough to ride the coattails of the world's most reviled mother…and bow out when Octomom's name has gotten significant press, and before Killeen actually had to do anything to earn whatever cut she was going to take of the projected "take" for Octomom via website or appearances or book deals, or, heaven forefend, stand behind her choice of clients.

Is this ethical?

No more ethical than Octomom being serviced by a doctor whose ethics are, at the very least, highly questionable.

Why do I not include Octomom in my quandary about ethics? She did, after all, bring eight more babies into a world run into the ground by Bush and Wall Street and a brain-dead SEC. But she is, I am certain, non compos mentis.  Or else she is a better manipulator than….hmm….Imelda Marcos or Leona Helmsely. Right. Those two will do.  Master manipulators. Non compos mentis  Well, probably. But totally out of touch with the world around them?  Without a doubt.  All three.

I believe the police should investigate the threats against Octomom and Killeen. But I wonder why we are having to waste law enforcement time on this. It is hard to believe that either Suleman or her doctor or Killeen didn't foresee a tad of disgust at a penniless, delusional mother of six bringing eight more babies into the world at an initial cost of $1.5 million, or thereabouts.  It is even harder to believe that, by fanning the flames, Killeen thought she would be immune to expressions of disgust, even unconscionably couched as death threats. She has now bowed out, so, having had her moment of piggybacked fame, she is now out of the line of fire by the nutjobs. That might be called eating one's cake and having it too. And it poses an ethical question, needless to say.

I have had death threats from writing this column. I must say, I expected hate mail, but death threats did seem a little over the top for an opinion piece. After all, my opinions don't cost anyone anything, certainly not a bill of $1.5 million in a marketplace flying apart at the seams. They are born in my brain for free.  Indeed, one could say I offer some free entertainment to anyone hooked up to the Internet.

Still, I was not surprised by threats to me; I've been a journalist too long. And if Ms. Killeen has been in the highly remunerative business of manipulating the media, I'd be shocked if this is the first time she has encountered a down side, even death threats.

So why did Killeen get into this lose-lose situation? Find out who her other clients are or have been, and you'll find out if she was milking Octomom (you should excuse the pun.)

It is hard to figure out who is the most unethically despicable in this whole tawdry mess. Perhaps Octomom deserves some funding simply for taking our minds of global financial disaster looming over our heads, or for making some of us miss a TV episode of some "fake-ality" show like Lost or some equally preposterous made-up slice of imbecilic life.

Death threats, at any time and in any place against any one, are wrong. Just wrong.

They are worse than bringing eight innocent children into a big world one cannot control (any parent has done that, after all).  They are even far worse than bringing a total of 14 children into the world when one is penniless, delusional (Angelina Jolie lips, anyone?), manipulative, lazy and greedy.

I must say, despite my innate desire for less government and more individual freedom, I also believe the old adage, "Your right to swing ends at my nose." That encompasses, needless to say, death threats.

But it also includes Octomom's behavior. I think Nadya Suleman has just brushed all our noses with her fist full of delusion, thereby givins us a perfect right to protect others she might harm (her kids) and to full restitution of all the currency—monetary and otherwise—that has been spent serving her ignorant, insane, selfish and delusional emergence as a national figure of loathing and disgust.

The one thing we have abolutely no right to is issuing death threats against her or against any of her aidors and abbetors. If what Suleman did seems wrong to some of us--and clearly, it does--death threats are wrong, wrong, wrong all of the time in all places for all reasons. Not to mention illegal. Period.