A reader responded with a bit more info what show it was:

They were never dumbed up

It’s not you, Pam.  And that was the Today Show, with Prince Vapid Matt Lauer and his consort, Meredith Viera (though the twins-with-two-daddies segment was hosted by someone else).  These shows haven’t been dumbed down because they had nowhere to fall.  Viera and Lauer are sorry excuses for journalists.  They constantly say ‘on a lighter note’ when they switch from a baby decapitation to a YouTube clip of a dancing cat, and vice versa.  Lauer can be astonishingly stupid.  This morning they both crowed about calling the Kris Allen Idol win.  To be honest, news in general is in a sad state.  It’s not just the morning news.  The networks had to switch to infotainment long ago to pay for their news divisions, and the result has been the blurring of the lines between Anna Nicole stories and suicide bombings.  Now every other story is about how terrible (terrible!) the economy is, with segments on coupon shopping, cooking with peanut butter, the best place to buy hand-me-downs for the kids.  It’s mostly crap, with the possible exception of PBS and BBC World News (and Christiane Amanpour!  Say hi from your readers!)

BTW, that last parenthetical statement refers to this.

I don’t know which is worse, the thought that the host needed to ask a question that basic, thinking the audience is that clueless, or that the host herself is that out to lunch.

Both.

AWW, Noble beat me to it. It probably IS both. Americans are about as sharp as a sack of wet mice, and since the TV host is (more than likely) American…

I haven’t watched news since I read Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Postman isn’t always right, but he was definitely right that television news is all entertainment and no news. Unfortunately, print is rapidly following.

The only way I could see a question like that even beginning to make sense is if you had a case like the fertility clinic failure that led to a Belgian (?) woman giving birth to one white twin and one mixed-race twin who was quite obviously of African extraction. “These twins will look radically different from one another, and insensitive strangers will probably routinely assume that one or the other is adopted.  Do you think that this might affect the bond twins typically share?” is pretty much the only read on that which doesn’t presume a host who’s dumb as a box of rocks.

It’s just gossip.  It’s always been just gossip - at least as long as I can remember.  The morning shows were designed as feel-good attention grabbers, in an attempt to sell cleaning detergent to house wives and affordable four door sedans to their husbands.  If you were looking for intelligent media coverage and you found it on any show airing before 2pm, you were incredibly lucky or had very low standards.

People get up in the morning and turn on the TV to get weather, traffic, and maybe some generic “What happened while I was asleep” news.  It’s always been the most superficial stuff.

I mean… I don’t even know what to say except “No shit”.

Maybe… maybe if you assume that “regular fraternal twins” (i.e. ones who share the same father) somehow have a closer bond in the womb than fraternal twins who *don’t* share the same father… I don’t know, maybe one twin is teasing the other twin with ‘my dad can beat up your dad’ jokes or something. I’d need an ultrasound to be sure.

I don’t know. Maybe having the same father and mother does results in a closer bond in siblings than having a different father. But I think adopted kids and mixed families work out just fine.

Geez, I haven’t watched the morning news shows for decades, literally. At least in part because morning news shows have always been dumb (remember, as a kid in 1950s, when Dave Garroway’s co-host was a chimp. Literally, a chimp.)

I also gave up on local TV news after a spate of dead baby stories in New York City: frozen baby, baby eaten by family Doberman, mentally ill mom bakes baby in oven, news reporter informs father, live, father collapses to his knees in the street—viola! the end of watching local TV news.

When I get up I usually tune to reruns of the Sopranos, or some smart syndicated sit com (currently, Frasier)—I don’t tune in the news until Keith Olberman or Rachel Maddow in the evening, unless there’s something like an earthquake or local riot that needs checking out in the morning, but it’s usually difficult to find actual news amongst the inanity. Too much inanity and I’m back to a well-written drama or sitcom while reading my news off the internet.

The one exception: the morning of 9/11, for some reason I immediately turned on the TV news as soon as I got up—to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center.

By that last sentence I meant, that for some inexplicable reason, before I knew of the tragedy on a conscious level, instead of my usual routine, I turned on the TV news first on 9/11 - only to see a plane hit the second tower.

I’m on the west coast, so that may have been a taped replay (I no longer remember the time), but that may also have been one of the few mornings TV news shows weren’t inane.

Mandos, how do fraternal twins - remember, they don’t look alike, after all - know (consciously or not) that one of them came from different sperm than the other, thus weakening the bond they otherwise would have had?

Essie,

I have fraternal boy twins. A blond, blue-eyed and a brown/brown. They have the same father, but he was a donor and their adopted father looks much more like the brown haired, brown-eyed child than the other one.

The reason twins have a bond (and they do) is because they grow up together in exactly the same environment at exactly the same developmental stage in their lives and share SO MUCH TIME and people and everything together. There might also be something about them being in the womb together as well that starts the bond early (i.e. my twins could only sleep together as infants. They preferred to sleep together rather than with me even.)

Since my twins look so different, and one looks very different from their father, I get asked often if the blond is adopted or if they are twins or step children (or if he is just a class friend visiting). They both know their paternal situation, they both know who their father is. Granted, this is not the exact same situation as twins having two fathers, but geez, this is a perfect example of the media trying to make up drama where there doesn’t have to be any. Frat twins are siblings who share an experience, the same thing applies to these kids.

Pam, if you think that was stupid, don’t ever, ever watch the fourth hour with Kathy Lee Gifford and some woman named Hoda, your brains will leak out of your ears from the utter stupidity.

My favorite Kathy Lee Gifford/Hoda moment was when she had Heather Armstrong (Dooce) on and chastized her for exposing her daughter on the internet. This is KATHY LEE GIFFORD with Cody and whoever and whoever who she constantly talked about and showed pictures of on National television. I think Armstrong said as much and the hypocracy went right over Gifford’s head.

Mandos, how do fraternal twins - remember, they don’t look alike, after all - know (consciously or not) that one of them came from different sperm than the other, thus weakening the bond they otherwise would have had?

Psychic power. The same way adopted children know they are adopted before they are told.

I had a friend on Facebook who posted that story yesterday from a blog post entitled “Science Discovers World’s Sluttiest Woman”.  I pointed out that it was a huge double standard, because it wasn’t the science that he cared about, but how many dicks she had had in her within a given time period.  He said blah blah it’s not like the guys were totally innocent, but that’s screwed up, blah, and I said, “Well, I guess I’m just a huge slut, too, then, and not properly ashamed of it, but you wouldn’t know it since I didn’t pregnant at the time - after all, it’s not the pregnancy you cared about.”

He unfriended me.  :-D

What’s really funny is when a parent has a set of boy and girl twins and people ask if the twins are identical.

Today and company have always been vapid. back when my computer was in my bedroom, I started tuning into BBC. Now that it’s not, upstairs, turn on the local 24-hour news channel and downstairs, NPR. That’s probably why the Morning Edition audience has skyrocketed. CNN wasn’t all bad under Miles and Soledad, but I despise John Roberts and whatshername. If Matt Lauer’s picture isn’t under the definition of “empty suit” then Roberts’ must be.

Meow.  Meow, meow, meow. 

This sort of multiple birth with multiple fathers thing happens a lot in nature.  Chances are, the great cat was gestated with any number of half-siblings.

Not like the two sperm that make for male/female twin pairs are as alike as any two same-chromosome sperm ...

I had a friend on Facebook who posted that story yesterday from a blog post entitled “Science Discovers World’s Sluttiest Woman”.

There’s so much wrong with all of that, especially given that, something like 20% of children aren’t fathered by their mothers husband/partner.

And you’re right, she only got caught because of the pregnancy. I remember talking to a (now former) friend who was worried that the girl he liked was “used up”  and “loose” by having sex with a lot of guys. He didn’t even have any evidence, he was just paranoid at the possibility that the girl he was trying to date was a “slut”.  I pointed out that unless she told him the exact number he wouldn’t have any idea how many guys she’d slept with because the vaginal canal is elastic and it fits whomever. He was not happy with this answer and it’s one of the reasons I stopped being friends with him.

Ultramagnus:

Also, why is it that it is supposed to get loose only whenever you have sex with a lot of partners rather than the same amount of sex with one partner?  Strange, that.  ::shakes head::

I mean, has no one explained the whole concept of childbirth to these morons?

INTPagan, that’s hilarious.

To answer the childbirth question, though, I have known guys who were worried that - once their (hypothetical) wife gave birth - she wouldn’t be “as tight a fit”. Ugh.

Ultramagnus, I used to know a virgin who was obsessed with only dating other versions. He was manically frightened that he might “go where another guy has been”. Now that he’s in his thirties, i wonder sometimes how the search is going.

I have boy / girl twins and have frequently been asked if they are identical or fraternal.  I patiently explain that boy / girl twins could never be identical.  OK, not always patiently.

Do not have cable.  Never watch this crap.

But I have to say, if I found myself in this situation, I doubt I would tell the world.  Having an affair isn’t exactly something to be proud of—even if it does have an astounding statistical result.  Feel bad for the boys growing up with everyone knowing their story before they do.

I have fraternal twin brothers and they can barely stand each other.  So I’m guessing these kids WOULD have a good chance of having that kind of bond, or maybe even a positive one!

Sperm worship. It’s ruining the nation’s minds. At least she didn’t ask if they could be related if they have different fathers.

“We look alike we talk alike we act alike and what is more
We hate each other very much
We hate our folks
We’re sick and tired of people’s jokes
About how they can’t tell us apart!”...

...sorry, couldn’t resist.

That “world’s sluttiest woman” thing is some fucked up shit. For all he knows the dads are her partners in a polyamorous threesome. But, you know what? Even if she had lots and lots of casual sex with total strangers… who the fuck cares? Why should this be a value judgement on her as a person?

I have a supervillain character who screws an average of three different men every week, because she can. And she laments that people who would actually forgive her for the supervillainy can’t get over the amount of casual sex with strangers she has… as if turning frat boys into werewolves is understandable, perhaps even laudable in a way, but being a slut is just beyond the pale. Sadly, I think this is actually how people think.

I have boy / girl twins and have frequently been asked if they are identical or fraternal.  I patiently explain that boy / girl twins could never be identical.  OK, not always patiently.

Print up some pamphlets and hand them out to save time.

“To answer the childbirth question, though, I have known guys who were worried that - once their (hypothetical) wife gave birth - she wouldn’t be “as tight a fit”. Ugh. “

Hell, my husband and I are both hoping that childbirth will make me “looser.” And, incidentally, we have just about the same number of sexual partners and, yeah, tightness has never been a concern. Idiots.

I have a supervillain character who screws an average of three different men every week, because she can. And she laments that people who would actually forgive her for the supervillainy can’t get over the amount of casual sex with strangers she has… as if turning frat boys into werewolves is understandable, perhaps even laudable in a way, but being a slut is just beyond the pale.

I like your ideas and would like to subscribe to your book club.

Try having a partner who has a different skin color than yours or having children with different partners who have different skin colors. I have close friends who have families that reflect both these situations and the level of shit they have to put up with is unbelievable.

Perfect strangers feel completely comfortable in asking why/how/when they adopted (assuming one kid is the biological child and the other is not) and say things like, “My she’s so exotic looking!” and “What is she?”.

The situations really draw attention to the continual monitoring of both female sexuality and the need some people have to have clear definitions about another person’s race.

“What is she?”

OMG. “Human. What are you?”

Then again, I was thinking today about the stupid shit I say. When I see a kid and I want to compliment them, I always say, “Aren’t you pretty / cute / handsome?” As if their attractiveness level has anything to do with their value as a human. But saying that they are “smart” wouldn’t make sense without a display of behavior that I could label as “smart”, and saying, “Well, aren’t you a wonderful, unique individual” sounds stilted (at best) or even insulting.

When someone proudly presents their child to me, what should I say to compliment the child (which I do want to do) without being “looks-ist”?

But, yeah, “What is she?” is just beyond the pale.

UltraMagnus: I’m pretty sure that’s not actually true. I seem to recall that the ‘X% of kids aren’t the woman’s husband’s’ stat is based on people who had paternity tests done - which is to say, that’s the percentage when the paternity was in doubt for some reason, and there’s no reason to believe that husbands with no doubts in their heads are being cuckolded at the same rate.

You have to admit, “This is my twin half-brother” has a pretty strange ring to it.

I mean, has no one explained the whole concept of childbirth to these morons?

INTPagan,

I wouldn’t.  You’re just asking for trouble.

The thing that really draws my ire is both the intrusion (pregnant women and people with children seem to be up for grabs in public) and this sense of entitlement to KNOW when it comes to issues of race (and increasingly, gender).

“Science Discovers World’s Sluttiest Woman”.

I would’ve thought that was an Onion article.

Been dumbed down since the beginning. Murrow had the goods on ‘em in ‘58:

http://turnoffyourtv.com/commentary/hiddenagenda/murrow.html

Honestly, I may keep watching PBS kids shows in the morning even after the kid’s too old for them. Much more intelligent.

I don’t see anything particularly fucked up about having two partners in a 24 to 48 hours period. If this had been a man, Spike would be headlining this “Scientists discovered cool dude had an awesome weekend!”.

I do see it as a bit unethical that, according to the data I’m given mind you, it seems the woman both cheated behind her partner’s back and they (almost certainly) did not use a condom, which is a safer sex no-no if you’re going to be two-timing someone…

But I’m pretty sure Spike and INTPagan’s friends are just worried about virtually touching another guy’s sausage by interposed pussy. Which is all kinds of fucked up in itself.

Because if your dick touches another dude’s spooge that totally makes you gay.

When blood typing was understood enough to be used for paternity testing, a study was done that found 20% of the children from marriages in early 20th Century Europe were illegitimate.  This was done testing a random sample of the population, BTW.

UltraMagnus: I’m pretty sure that’s not actually true. I seem to recall that the ‘X% of kids aren’t the woman’s husband’s’ stat is based on people who had paternity tests done - which is to say, that’s the percentage when the paternity was in doubt for some reason, and there’s no reason to believe that husbands with no doubts in their heads are being cuckolded at the same rate.

Yeah, I can’t seem to find the stat now but I remember reading an article about this father who, while at his son’s little league game, looked from his son playing to the coach (or something, it was another guy) and the sudden realization that *his* kid looked like the other guy. He confronted his wife and she admitted the truth and then that’s when they brought in the stats.

Though, I took a sexuality course in college and there was a little anedote from the professor about why, when a baby is born, all the women members of the family will usually say something like, “He looks just like the father!/He’s got his father’s X” Of course, newborns look like squisy moles, and you can’t actually determine paternity by merely looking at a newborn so the professor hypothesized that this exchange developed over time in cultures to reassure the father that it was indeed his.

And she also mentioned that people, before science, believed (wrongly) that sperm could live in women for YEARS, so that’s why such emphasis was put on marrying virgins, so there was no way you could be cuckholded by years old sperm. Of course we know that’s not true any more and thank goodness for scientific advancement.

Because if your dick touches another dude’s spooge that totally makes you gay.

But, how does the popularity of gang bang porn fit into that?

Mandos, how do fraternal twins - remember, they don’t look alike, after all - know (consciously or not) that one of them came from different sperm than the other, thus weakening the bond they otherwise would have had?

Pheremones. Smelling immune systems.  Behavioural cues. Unconscious comparison of bone structures.

Now, I *think* people here are right, and the bond is environmental.  But wouldn’t it be an interesting piece of science if the hypothesis “twins with different fathers are less close than twins with the same father” was *true*? 

It would be worth testing as a hypothesis, except that (i) you’d need a huge sample given that other factors are likely to be more significant and (ii) it would have little relevance to individual cases.  I can also state that people shouldn’t be as certain as they seem to think above - common sense would suggest you’re right, but there’s room for surprises and it is, as far as I know, untested.

Essie, that’s the best (and funniest) response to the raging idiocy of the “what are you?” question I’ve seen. Ta.

Upthread about the women members saying that a baby looks like the father:

My gynecologist has more women than one would expect confess to him that the baby they are pregnant with is not the husband’s (or, that there is question about it).  That’s his cue to ensure that at the birth, he makes it a point to say how much the baby looks like the father.  Good for him!

Geez, I haven’t watched the morning news shows for decades, literally. At least in part because morning news shows have always been dumb (remember, as a kid in 1950s, when Dave Garroway’s co-host was a chimp. Literally, a chimp.)
~  ~judibrowni

And it was so much smarter then, too, what with the chimp not being a current MSM morning show host.

[I]t’s a common feeling in the world that genetic distance between siblings is a recipe for emotional distance, whether or not it’s actually true.
~ ~ Mandos

I’m not meaning to be flip with this, what does “genetic distance” mean?  Is it referring to genetic siblings versus adopted siblings?

Susanne I hope your gynecologist only does the “s/he looks just like the father” patter when it has been established that the genetic father looks enough like husband so as not to cause a problem.  After all, it’d be odd for a doctor to utter that, if they were of different races.

I know a very pale redhead with blue eyes who married a Hispanic man.

One day while out and about with their daughter they were asked “So, what exactly is she?”

The father turned, shrugged and said, “We don’t know for sure. That’s why we never sent in her puppy papers.”

“Do you think these two babies will have the same emotional bond as regular fraternal twins?”

If that was the case my “sane” fraternal twin aunt would have joined her “not so sane” sister in the game of “my life is hell and I refuse to do anything about it becuase I’m not the one with the problem - everyone else is bi-polar!” a long time ago.

And also - YIKES. There are some days when I’m wishing that I could *headdesk* eternally.
:/

OT to Essie:
I like your ideas and would like to subscribe to your book club.
If you have an account on livejournal, I’ve been posting the story friendslocked to my journal alara_works (http://alara-works.livejournal.com), since I intend to publish it, so I can’t make it publicly available. You can friend the journal and I’ll friend your account back.

Also, I use the character as a muse (fictional character you pretend to be, or write ficlets for, for prompts) at http://dr-meg-mystery.livejournal.com and t,hat one’s not friendslocked.

</derailment>

From a genetics testing website about testing fraternal twins for paternity:

While extremely rare, it is possible that each egg is fertilized by sperm cells from two different men, thus forming twins with two different fathers, called bi-paternal twins. According to recent studies published by the National Institutes of Health, it is estimated that approximately 1 in 12 fraternal twin sets are bi-paternal, meaning that each twin has a different father (Note that fraternal twinning is a relatively rare event in itself—fraternal twins make up about 2% of the world’s population).

In other words, it is far more common than people think or let on!

read more: http://www.dnacenter.com/science-technology/articles/twins-different-fathers.html

I know a very pale redhead with blue eyes who married a Hispanic man.

I have a japanese/indian friend who, with her African husband, is about to become a mother any minute.

She is preparing for a cavalcade of stupidity - and has encountered a fair amount already.

Twins aren’t the same because they’re siblings, they don’t have a bond just because they’re related, even identical twins.  They share a bond because they spent the first 9 months of their existence being formed from one cell to a baby in the exact same place, being fed with the exact same nutrients, and having the exact same experiences.  What happens in utero affects everything.

when a baby is born, all the women members of the family will usually say something like, “He looks just like the father!/He’s got his father’s X” Of course, newborns look like squisy moles, and you can’t actually determine paternity by merely looking at a newborn

Of course you can’t definitively prove a baby’s paternity by looking at them, but claiming that all newborns look alike and don’t actually ever resemble their parents is kind of silly. Sometimes they do. My son slid out looking so much like his father, it just gobsmacked me.

Now, true, people probably do say “s/he looks just like you” more than they actually see it, probably because parents like to hear that their baby looks like them just like we like to hear that our baby is pretty, alert, all that stuff.

Also, why is it that it is supposed to get loose only whenever you have sex with a lot of partners rather than the same amount of sex with one partner?  Strange, that.  ::shakes head::

Even if you grant the stupid premise (sex is destructive to vaginas) it’s STILL stupid, since people in a single long-term relationship usually have a LOT more sex than people looking for one night stands, for the rather simple reason that it’s somewhat difficult to have a one-night stand on say, a Tuesday night.  So even if you sleep with a different person every Friday and Saturday night, you’re going to be way behind a couple living together.

If you have an account on livejournal, I’ve been posting the story friendslocked to my journal alara_works (http://alara-works.livejournal.com), since I intend to publish it, so I can’t make it publicly available. You can friend the journal and I’ll friend your account back.

Also, I use the character as a muse (fictional character you pretend to be, or write ficlets for, for prompts) at http://dr-meg-mystery.livejournal.com and t,hat one’s not friendslocked.

Alara, have you seen this?

Essie, I’ve said a child was intelligent just on the basis of observing them observe their surroundings. I saw a baby, less than 10 months, looking to the points of an open corridor that echoes rebounded from. As the baby of a music professor, it’s not surprising he’d be attuned to sound, but even so, it was pretty keen for such youth.
But a good all-purpose compliment would probably be “charming”, as there is more to charm than mere looks. Not screaming indoors adds to a child’s charm, for instance.

Re: half-siblings and closeness. I imagine the biggest factor in that would actually be in how adults treat them.

I’m kind of charmed (sorry, stole your word, Samantha) at the idea of bi-paternal twins. From the science point of view. It just seems cool that human bodies can do that. Kind of sci-fi.

Meanwhile, it could be either a neat family anecdote or a big PITA deal, depending on the circumstances and how the parents & family friends chose to deal with it. I hope these children grow up with as few issues from this as possible.

<i> but claiming that all newborns look alike and don’t actually ever resemble their parents is kind of silly. <i>

Babies do take a while to settle into their own appearance, but toddlers have been shown to strongly resemble their fathers.  I saw one study where they asked some random volunteers to look at pictures of toddler children (18-24 months or so) and pictures of men and match the fathers and the kids (there were some random controls who did not match thrown in to the mix).  People were able to match the kids with their dads and not match randoms with randoms a significant percentage of the time.

Believe it. They have.

Ms Kate - I would buy that; my daughter, from about six months to two years old (she’ll be three in less than a month) looked exactly, carbon copy, like her biological father.  However, she’s really starting to look like me now.

Note that I don’t think this proves or disproves any statistics.

“When someone proudly presents their child to me, what should I say to compliment the child (which I do want to do) without being “looks-ist”? “

I think ‘cute’ covers a lot of ground, from K-Mart ad modelling ready kids with conventional good looks to jug-eared tykes wearing coke-bottle glasses. To me, it describes personality as well as looks.

My son’s newborn pictures are actually almost indistinguishable from his father’s newborn pictures. The main difference is that my son was born jaundiced so he has a much darker color in his newborn pictures (since he’s an albino, he got his pale coloring as soon as he got over the jaundice, but the “just born” pictures were taken while he had it.)

This is not true of baby pictures of my daughter, or our older son (who biologically isn’t mine, he’s technically my stepson, but he is his dad’s.) (We no longer have baby pictures of the older daughter; they were lost in an eviction.) They do not look nearly so much like their father. So babies don’t all look alike, and some babies really do look pretty much exactly like their dads.

It goes the other way too. My daughter looks frighteningly like me at that age, my mother looked like both of us but with darker hair, and when we finally acquired a picture of my mother’s biological mother, she looks like someone took a picture of my mom and photoshopped the teeth out. But of course most of the time women don’t need visual proof that their kids belong to them. (I say most of the time because there are mixups at hospitals, errors with fertility treatments, and the like.)

When someone proudly presents their child to me, what should I say to compliment the child (which I do want to do) without being “looks-ist”?

Essie, I usually say “gorgeous” or “lovely”, since to me that denotes a quality other than just simple aesthetics.  It’s hair-splitting a little though.  I know I’d much prefer those words, or cute (although I think it has a slightly different meaning in UK English to US English), to “pretty” for my little girl (or “handsome”, which she gets a lot since she hasn’t got much hair, and I don’t dress her uber-pink).

Having said that though, as a general rule I try to praise my and other children on the basis of behaviour and effort rather than an innate quality.  Especially at a very young age, when it’s not as if thy are doing much consciously, it doesn’t seem a great deal different to praise them on the basis of looks or brains - they are both things, at the stage, that just are.