With augmented lips and a pile of babies, the question’s been raised, “Is she trying to emulate Angelina Jolie?” 

 

You’ll remember that Octo-Mom gave birth to eight IVF babies a couple months back, and that she already had six sprouts at home from the previous round.  That’s right, 14 kids and only two birthdays to remember.

 

There’s an exclusive video interview with Octo-Mom, released today at RadarOnline.  If you haven’t seen it yet, go there now and take a look, gather your own thoughts on the video, then come back here and I’ll give you my take.   

 

While most folks are looking at Octo-Mom with a “She’s nuts!” approach, I’m more interested in the way she has approached her situation and the instant fame it’s brought her.

 

So you checked out the interview? 

 

Okay, let’s get to it…

 

This thing is fascinating on a few levels:

 

1 - Her angle of attack…

 

When I say “angle of attack” I’m talking about her role in the interview and the way she approached it. 

 

The first thing that struck me was that Octo-Mom introduced herself.  Pretty unusual that the interviewee kicks off the show, even pitches the website, and it’s a little odd that we never see the interviewer.  The “interviewer” turns out to be more a facilitator, there just to enable her to bring out the points she wants to make. 

 

In the video she plays heavily to the camera, adjusting her shirt, flipping her hair frequently, and even looking directly into the camera as she’s being asked questions.  She’s had a fierce introduction, but Octo-Mom is still relatively new to performing, and she obviously hasn’t yet learned rule #1:  Never look at the camera.

 

Overall, she loves the attention and it shows.

 

2—What she chose to talk about…

 

A lot of the blogs and online news sites have pitched this video as an “Octo-Mom Confession”.  Since the births, ALL of the press has tilted negative toward her—the common sentiment has been that by having so many babies she’s guilty of something. 

 

So anything that remotely smacks of a confession is cause for a new phase of media coverage, and she gave it to them when she said, “I was lying to myself”. 

 

The controversy over Octo-Mom focuses on this:  A single woman, having 14 babies through artificial means.  Without babies, Octo-Mom is just Nadya Suleman, Whittier, CA. 

 

You’ll notice, though, that she speaks little about the children.  She clearly regards this as HER interview, and she makes it ABOUT her.  She’s so eager to speak that she talks over the interviewer as he opens with this, a question on the issue of having so many kids to deal with:  “You said the other day that you had absolutely no idea… that it was going to be so chaotic, especially the homecoming of the babies.”

 

She does something interesting (and common) here.  Rather than address the point that’s been raised, she takes it in a direction that suits her interests. 

 

She claims to have been in a state of denial over what having so many babies would be like—giving the websites their headlines—then she immediately shifts to talking about the publicity, rather than the care of the babies:

 

“I’m denying, I keep telling my head, and rationalizing over and over, next week it’s gonna die down, next week after that it’s eventually going to die down, it’s gonna go away, it’s eventually going to be to the point where we can leave, and have privacy, and no one follow us.”

 

Her response centers not on the chaos of taking care of babies, but on the media attention that’s ensued.   It’s always interesting to notice what part of an issue a person chooses to address.  Even when asked a question, they usually have options.  It’s fascinating to note that she is more fixated on the media attention, than on her newly arrived octuplets.

 

She alludes to her hope the media attention will ”die down”, but I’ll submit to you that this less a hope and more a fear.  How many people with a publicist (she’s had two already) want the media to quit paying attention to them?   

 

I’ve written about the power of rationalization.  It enables people to do what they please, and it frees their conscience to use deception when it’s “needed”.  So it’s interesting that Octo-Mom cites rationalization in the quote above, using it in this case to relieve her of responsibility. 

 

It’s as if she is observing herself, at the same time admitting her lack of reality and claiming credit for seeing it. 

 

Convoluted?  Yes.  Uncommon?  No.  You’ve probably seen a celebrity heralded by the media for recovering from their drug addiction so admirably.  In either case, this is the equivalent of setting your house on fire and thenbeing called a hero for putting it out.  

 

You’ll notice that when asked about her mother’s absence at the children’s homecoming, she again makes herself the center of the story, saying her mother has always “dismissed and disrespected” her. 

 

She excuses her mother, too:  “She really didn’t have a voice.  She was always dismissed as a child.”

 

3—Her honesty…

 

Taken as a whole, the video is not a confession at all.  It’s a production with a commercial purpose.  It’s been reported that RadarOnline (partly owned by The National Enquirer) paid Octo-Mom Mom (Nadya’s mother) 40k for an interview a month or so ago. 

 

From Octo-Mom’s perspective, the purpose of the interview is to:  1-promote Octo-Mom, and 2-repair Octo-Mom’s image.  Any deceptive moments are there only to serve those two goals.  She’s not there to deny guilt in the classic sense, ie, having committed a crime.  Think Scott Peterson.

 

There were a couple of remarks, though, that I thought were revealing.  At the beginning Octo-Mom says that a “friend” told her she was reading something that commented on her honesty, and as Octo-Mom tells us this she smiles, waves her hand, and says, ”I don’t read any of that junk.”  Always beware of those who deny an accusation that hasn’t been made. 

 

Next was a quote that I thought interesting, one that showed some deception.  When asked, “Are you obsessed with children?”  Octo-Mom laughs and responds, “Am I obsessed with children.” 

 

I said responds because she didn’t give an answer, only repeated the question back.  Both the laugh and the repeating of the question are common stall techniques that allow time for the deceptive to come up with a good reply.

 

Even more interesting, notice she doesn’t say it back as a question; she repeats it in the tone of a statement.  She is subliminally conceded a point of logic here:  How could anyone with 14 kids not have an obsession with children, or at least the acquisition of them.   

 

At the end, Octo-mom gives us an outright truthful statement that tells more than she knows:  “My goal is to write a book.”  That admission explains why she did the interview, and reinforces her appreciation of all the media attention.  If you have to pay for it, media exposure is very expensive.  They call it advertising.  She’s been blessed with a trainload of it, all free.  The only problem?  It’s all been negative. 

 

But is that really a game-killer?  Hey, nothing sells like a trainwreck. 

 

And ironically, these days a person doesn’t have to be liked… to be of interest.  Heck, sometimes the people we’re most curious about are the ones we like the least.  

Tags: confession, honesty, interview, rationalization

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Deception. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.