TV, internet can't get enough of 'Octomom'

The octo-spectacle just won't go away. And instead of running from the limelight, "Octomom" Nadya Suleman and her cast of characters have thrust themselves head-on into the circling, hungry maw of the 24/7 TV-cable-radio-internet-Twitter news cycle.

Suleman's media juggernaut reached new highs last week, starting with her ex-boyfriend, who tearfully went on national TV to demand a paternity test. It continued with her father on The Oprah Winfrey Show, accusing his daughter of being irresponsible and questioning her mental state. At one point he asked the talk show queen, "Will you help?"

But it didn't stop there. Radar Online unleashed videos over four days, including tours of the family's cramped house and a "video showdown" between Suleman and her mother. At one point, Angela Suleman called her daughter "obsessive compulsive."

Sister programs Entertainment Tonight and The Insider touted their own "exclusive," also stretching their shared interview out over five days.

Dr. Phil devoted Wednesday and Thursday to "octomania" - with five episodes in two weeks - and managed to curry enough favor with Suleman to become her confidant: When Kaiser Permanente hospital officials questioned her ability to take care of the octuplets, Dr. Phil was the doctor she called in distress.

Celebrity attorney Gloria Allred entered the fray, offering Suleman a house and 24-hour nursing care for the octuplets. And two pornography studios made dueling overtures: Vivid Entertainment offered Suleman up to $1 million to star in a movie, while Pink Visual said it would give her a year's worth of diapers to turn down Vivid.

"You can't point to a TV show right now that has a better plot than Octomom," said Janice Min, editor in chief of Us Weekly, which featured Suleman on its cover with an eight-page spread inside. "We have someone who is living her own national reality show for the cameras. . . . The story has every element that scripted TV would die for. Dysfunctional family, public feuding with the mother . . . the plastic surgery, the Angelina Jolie comparisons. . . . Now there's a baby-daddy mystery."

Suleman's celebrity status is the product of the round-the-clock news cycle. The messy details of Suleman's family life have propelled her to even greater notoriety and at least some measure of fortune, rather than making people turn away.

"Lindsay and Britney are not on the front burner, so now we have Nadya," said Howard Bragman, Hollywood publicist and author of Where's My Fifteen Minutes? "It's a freaky story. And by the way, it happened in Southern California, where every entertainment outlet in the world has a crew."

Suleman's plight has continued to capture the public's imagination, in part because each passing day has revealed another twist. Interest in a genuinely rare event, only the second octuplet birth in U.S. history, quickly turned from a legitimate debate over medical ethics into a full-blown tabloid drama.

First, it was disclosed that she had six other children. Then, it turned out she is a single mom on public assistance living in a home facing foreclosure.

She used in-vitro fertilization to get pregnant with all 14 kids. Her sperm donor remains a mystery, and her elusive Beverly Hills doctor may be the only one still keeping his mouth shut.

The uncanny resemblance to Jolie added another puzzling element. Many have claimed Suleman had plastic surgery to make herself look more like Jolie, a charge she denies.