Oh, Mike Huckabee, Do Shut Up

Two of my least favorite Mikes, Huckabee and Medved, both privileged white conservative men (who, it should be noted, oppose the sorts of policies that both prevent unwanted pregnancies and make single parenthood easier) got together to pontificate on the EEEEEEEEVILLLLLLS of single parenthood. Whoooooops! Did I say single parenthood? Ha ha—silly me! Of course I mean single motherhood.


[Transcript below.]
So women should DEFINITELY get married. Unless, of course, they want to marry another woman. And then they should definitely NOT get married. Okay. Got it.

Other messages I'm getting lately: Mike Huckabee is a racist. Oh wait, ha ha, I already knew that.

Oh, and he's also a liar: It is not true, as he contends, that "most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care." Single mothers do indeed have higher rates of unemployment (and underemployment) than the rest of the population, and single mothers also experience higher rates of poverty, but it is flatly false that "most," or anything even close to half, of single mothers are unemployed and totally dependent on the government to keep their children alive.

Anyway, I'm glad these two sincere gentlemen are so concerned about single mothers. I look forward to their vociferous support for woman/parent-friendly workplace policies and the funding of a comprehensive safety net for all US workers.

MEDVED: Governor, I know you probably are out on book tour right now, you probably didn't have a chance to watch the Academy Awards last night?

HUCKABEE: I'm very happy to say that I missed it because usually it's about the most boring waste of several hours that I've ever experienced.

MEDVED: Well this was a - this was a low audience. However, there was - there was one moment where a very brilliant and admirable actress named Natalie Portman won Best Actress, and she won for a movie which I loathed called Black Swan. But in any event, she got up, she was very visibly pregnant, and it's really it's a problem because she's about seven months pregnant, it's her first pregnancy, and she and the baby's father aren't married, and before two billion people, Natalie Portman says, 'Oh I want to thank my love and he's given me the most wonderful gift.' He didn't give her the most wonderful gift, which would be a wedding ring! [Huckabee laughs.] And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic.

HUCKABEE: You know Michael, one of the things that's troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, 'Hey look, you know, we're having children, we're not married, but we're having these children, and they're doing just fine.' But there aren't really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie. And I think it gives a distorted image that yes, not everybody hires nannies, and caretakers, and nurses. Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.

You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids -- across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering.

MEDVED: It's tremendously staggering.