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Mike Huckabee Slams Natalie Portman For Being 29 And Pregnant (And Single!)
By
Jen Chung
Published Mar 4, 2011
Modified Mar 4, 2011
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By
Jen Chung
Published Mar 4, 2011
Modified Mar 4, 2011
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Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is totally throwing himself into the national spotlight (and 2012 ring) with his remarks this week. After falsely claiming that President Obama grew up in Kenya, Huckabee, in a discussion about the Oscars, said on a radio program, "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."
He added, "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 wedlock children. 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."
The lack of comprehensive sex education (you know, sex education that discusses contraception, not the abstinence-only sex education that Huckabee has supported) and glamorizing of pregnancies at a young age—yes, we're looking at you, MTV—is definitely a problem. But why single out Natalie Portman as a bad role model? She was an Intel Science Talent Search semi-finalist when she was a Long Island high school student (and that was before she graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology!).
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mike huckabee
natalie portman
oscars
unwed pregnancy
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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