who needs a symbol when you can touch the real thing
The octuplet lady doesn't bother me that much. Sure, she's wasting taxpayer money, overpopulating the earth with children she doesn't have the resources to raise properly, and playing it fast and loose with ethically questionable technology. But really in the scheme of things, I can think of people who are fucking me over much more directly and inefficiently allocating my taxes on a much greater scale than this crazy woman. (A certain ex-champion Austrian bodybuilder comes to mind.) I understand that octuplet lady is a symbol. She represents the exact sort of irresponsibility that the government of the last eight years and the captains of finance who ignored both the concept of risk and their asset sheets are guilty of. Spawning sixteen children without a father or gainful employment is an example of over-leveraging that the average Joe (Sixpack) can understand. But by turning this woman into an iconic representation of this moment in history we displace our anger from those who deserve it. By sublimating our disgust at corporate welfare into oldschool welfare, we exchange a potentially useful sort of populism for the populism of the mob. People are sending this woman and her publicist death threats for God's sake. I don't condone death threats, but I do admire the initiative. I just wish that energy were employed more productively.