Dr. Phil's Octumom Circus

Those two symptoms of cultural excess--the young woman with a fixation on breeding and the super-salesman of psychobabble--were bound to get together in a media collision as embarrassing as it is prototypical.

Dr. Phil, out of the goodness of his heart and ratings for his talk show, arranged for child care to help Nadya Suleman with her brood of 14 including the octuplets, only to have it all end in a brawl between Suleman's lawyer and Gloria Allred, the not-publicity averse attorney for the volunteer group, Angels in Waiting.

Suleman has fired the Angels after an on-camera confrontation over their criticism of her child-rearing skills and, while not taking part in Dr. Phil's continuing public service coverage of her activities, did manage a call-in appearance to deny that she is an unfit mother.

Meanwhile, some 14 real children are involved in this surreal soap opera that is threatening to make the 1930s' freak show over the Dionne quintuplets look like the Partridge family. Has the economic downturn depleted California's social services to the point of being helpless to intervene in all this?