“Octo-Mom Gave Up Med School for Babies” trumpets the headline on RadarOnline, followed by a blurb outlining how Nadya Suleman, who burst to fame, if not fortune, last January when she gave birth to octuplets in Bellflower, had once planned to become a psychiatrist — before her 14 kids got in the way.

“I was pregnant with Amerah,” RadarOnline quotes, Suleman, “and I had this revelation in the

shower . . . I could go to the Virgin Islands and get my doctorate, my

M.D.,” she said.

The attentive reader (or at least, the reader who's still interested in Octo-Mom), will note the whimsical nature of Suleman's revelation about becoming a doctor, although RadarOnline keeps a straight face when it describes how Suleman “sacrificed a career as an M.D. for her children.” At the time of the future Octo-Mom's shower, Suleman had but two children. Yet there would seem to be a big difference between merely imagining one's self as a highly trained professional, while rinsing one's hair, and seriously breaking the sweat necessary to accomplish that feat.

On his Octorazzi blog, the Whittier Daily News'

Raul Roa spots the hype of RadarOnline's claim and suspects a

not-so-subtle job of media manipulation. Analyzing the video clip that

accompanies the RadarOnline story, Roa notes that, when pushed by

RadarOnline's interviewer, Ruben Garay, to state more unequivocally the

nature of her “sacrifice,” Suleman demurs by noting of her med school

(or was it Club Med?) scheme: 

“Well, I hadn't attended it

yet, I was pre med then I was going to go. It was a plan . .  . I

changed my plan in order to maybe have three kids.”
Roa points out

that Garay is heard to say to Suleman, as he tries once more to squeeze

out of her an unambiguous sound bite of maternal heroism, “So you gave med school up in order to have more children,” to which she submissively replies, “ok . . . yeah.”

Apparently

Suleman, who began her media adventure as a seemingly savvy user of the

press, has herself become the product of a news cycle stuck on Spin.

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