Compassion Pimps

I realize that the point of this article was to elicit a response of unquestioning compassion, but it fell short in certain respects.

Their minivan broke down on an on-ramp to Interstate 10 near the town of Sorrento, where giant dragonflies buzzed in the clammy heat over the bayou.

It would not have gotten all the way to Baton Rouge, anyway. There wasn't enough gas in the tank, there weren't any gas stations open for miles around, and besides, the Williams family didn't have enough money to buy more gas.

Now, they found themselves stranded halfway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge: Felicia Williams, 6 months pregnant, her boyfriend, Charles May, her mother, May's mother, her uncle and his girlfriend, and Williams' 11 children, aged 1 to 15.

Williams, 30, sat down on the ground behind minivan and wept.

This is where I tend to part company with progressives and maintain my rather heterodox judgemental liberal stance. There comes a certain breaking point where you gotta recognize some human fundamentals. Sometimes people are their own worst enemies, which is fine until you expect other people to subsidize it. Consider -- this woman is 30 years old, and has squeezed out a pup almost every single year since she was fifteen. And she's got another one on the way.

Do they not do tubal ligations in Nawlins? Have they not heard of this strange and wonderful invention called a condom?

Look, I do recognize that it's a sad situation, but it was a sad situation before the storm hit. For all the tiresome nattering of the values pimps, there is a core of truth which we all realize -- that family stability and sensible reproductive practices ameliorate the effects of poverty; i.e., if you're broke, don't have a dozen fucking kids you can't feed. (And if they're cramming seventeen people in one fucking van, she's too broke to afford a dozen kids.)

The article does not say if the boyfriend is the father of all twelve children or not. I'll hazard a guess and say "not". But here's the thing -- if he's the father of most or all of those kids, he needs to shit or get off the pot. Marry her already, and commit to your family. If, however, there's several baby-daddies involved here, then the woman needs to get her fucking head straight, because she's simply not doing right by those kids.

I don't want to tell her how to run what life she has, but I don't want to pay for her nonsense either. I'm a bad person that way. But that's the hazard of running an article such as this in so lackadaisically non-judgemental a fashion.