Huckabee Attacks Natalie Portman For Glamorizing “Out Of Wedlock Births”

In a radio appearance on Monday, Mike Huckabee attacked actress Natalie Portman for having a child “out of wedlock.” Huckabee said that it's “troubling” to see people like “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.'” Huckabee added that “it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock.”

Huckabee's remarks came in response to radio host Michael Medved, who discussed Portman's Academy Awards speech last Sunday. During her speech, Portman thanked fiancé Benjamin Millepied, “who choreographed the film, and has now given me my most important role of my life.” Medved said that Millepied “didn't give her the most wonderful gift, which would be a wedding ring! And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic.”

From the February 28 edition of Salem Radio's The Michael Medved Show:

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! 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.

Huckabee is a host for the Fox News Channel, and a potential presidential candidate. Portman's Black Swan is distributed by News Corp.'s Fox Searchlight.

In the early 1990s, then-Vice President Dan Quayle “ignited a firestorm of controversy when he criticized Murphy Brown, the powerful, intelligent character in an eponymous sitcom, for having a child out of wedlock -- and without any father in the picture whatsoever.”