Up until this weekend, if you had asked what the name Bristol Palin meant, I'd have assumed it was the name of a law firm in Pittsburgh. It turns out that Bristol Palin is the teenaged daughter of the Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, who will be John McCain's running mate. And for reasons that tell you a lot more about the obsessions of the Left than about the Palin family itself, Bristol Palin's love life has come under a whole lot of scrutiny.
Almost before her mother's introductory speech was completed in Dayton last Friday, the portside blogosphere was trafficking in some pretty nasty rumor-mongering about young Bristol. The story went that Bristol, portrayed as a wanton child who apparently hadn't accepted the overarching family value of absolute chastity, had been pregnant and that, for reasons that only make sense if you accept the gospel of Kos, the pregnancy was being concealed.
Worse, Governor Palin was faking a pregnancy to shield her irresponsible child's perfidy and would then raise her granddaughter as her own child, a child with Down's Syndrome yet. I further understand that the baby would have been born in the World Trade Center except that the government had toppled it as an inside job to justify the installation of the fascist government of the United States of Halliburton. I may not have that last part right, but it's not easy following the logic over there sometimes. It's possible that this baby might even be John Connor and that there will shortly be a plague of Terminators chasing him and blowing up random stretches of urban Blue America, but I have yet to independently verify that.
The portsiders had stories like that up on their sites all weekend long, but eventually they decided to back away from it. I'd give you the links but I have no interest in giving these people any more traffic than they already get. But today it turns out that while Bristol Palin was not the mother of her baby brother, she is indeed five months pregnant today. It also turns out that she is planning to marry the father of the child and will carry the baby to term.
Apparently, I'm supposed to be aghast at all this. How could a Good Republican Family have a Jamie Lynn Spears for a daughter? THERE MUST BE SOME HYPOCRISY HERE, RIGHT???!!!! WELL???????? Surely this means that Sarah Palin is an unfit mother, besides being worse than Dan Quayle. Surely we judgmental conservatives want Sarah Palin gone! At a minimum, shouldn't her daughter be forced to wear a Scarlet A on her maternity dress?
Well, no. Conservatives, especially those who have strong religious views, are usually more understanding about such things than they get credit for. Christians are called to follow Jesus and to live life by Jesus's example. Do we fall short of that? Yes. Of course we do. We are all sinners and that is why we all have to ask for God's forgiveness, often more times that we'd care to. There's a reason why sainthood is pretty select club.
There's no doubt that Bristol Palin and her boyfriend would have been better off if they had found a way to abstain from giving in to their passion. Life will be more complicated for them and the child that they are bringing into the world. But does anyone doubt that the child will not have love and support and that the child will have the chance to thrive in a family that chooses life? And no matter your view on abortion, would it not be better if more people viewed the arrival of a child as a blessing and not a punishment?
Cross-posted at True North
21 comments:
This is a plus. As Mark Steyn points out in his recent best seller, America Alone, if our western civilization is demographically to survive in the increasingly “hostile to the west” islamic world — and not end up like the sinking European populations — these are the precise people (the Bristol Palins’) we should thank for increasing their progeny.
there is no sin in having a baby.
i went through a period of 'shame on you' when i announced my girlfriend was pregnant (she became wife #1).
her and i were doing nothing different than the rest of our families, we just got caught is all.
i flipped them all the bird with a rowdy 'go to hell'. i wouldnt take their bullshit, and made it clear.
i earned a lot of respect from most for standing up for my woman.
also, i made a few enemies. but its not like they were the friends i needed anyway.
22 yrs later, my words for them havent changed: 'f-em'.
her and i were the first in a very soon-to-come large trend of pregnant weddings in both families.
sometimes i wonder: was it by accident, or did we, by our own actions and example, maybe prevent a few of our inconvenient cousins from being sucked into a sink?
pioneers take the arrows. i didnt mind doing what nobody else had done before, because what i did was right.
Gino,
Sounds like you did the right thing and that you had the right attitude about it. But that doesn't surprise me, good sir.
Best,
Mark
Was with some Dems tonight who actually thought McCain would dump Palin, no later than Wednesday. They were ripping her a good one. I chimed in with a few of Biden's shortcomings and that I thought Palin did a great job with her acceptance speech. I also thought she was good-looking. The political talk then ended for the night. :)
Mark,
please don't paint all liberals as participants in whatever the rumor(s) you are speaking about. I have absolutely no knowledge of what you are talking about. Then again, I read mostly foreign policy and conservative blogs (and spent most of this weekend fishing), but none that generally dwell on the personal lives of candidates children. I did see Obama's response to Palin's daughters pregnancy, and thought it was very classy.
You know my story, and that I went through a very similar situation at the same age as Bristol Palin. Things have turned out better than I could have ever imagined, and I wish the same for the Palins. But the road forward is not an easy one, and that poor girl does not need the world, both right and left, using the baby growing in her uterus as a political football.
This isn't a plus or a minus for anyone, politically. God willing, that family is going to be blessed with another child. And their lives will be incredibly enriched by that child. But Bristol's life will be very much changed. Her life plans will be altered, her ongoing education will be sidetracked, and almost everything will be much harder for her now. Right now, she is embarrased, probably a little angry at herself and the world, and scared to death. Pray for her. She needs our prayers.
Rich
Rich,
I didn't paint all liberals as in on this. I was referring to very specific websites. I chose not to name them only because they didn't deserve to get any more publicity for the filth they were publishing.
Obama's response was the right one, I agree. But he can't control what others do. And others (who support him) are doing bad things. You aren't one of those people - that's understood.
Once again it has been proven that politics is a scumbag's business.
We have gotten to the point where literally nothing is sacred, and people with pure beliefs on both sides of the aisle are being held hostage by political operatives who don't really care about any other issues than winning. There is plenty of sin on both sides of the aisle when it comes to these politicos.
The price that we pay is that ultimately good people with good ideas will choose not to run for office because facing the scrutiny of inneudendo's for oneself and their family simply isn't worth the price of winning an election. The second price is an increasingly cynical public.
When one side digs up dirt, the other side feels compelled to dig up bigger dirt. We've now moved to the point where things that are completely untrue about family members, an area that used to be considered "Sacred" are fair game.
Barak had better hope that he has no skeletens, or even any alleged ones in his family. It can pretty much be guaranteed that they will be coming out. While I don't support him, I do feel compassion for him if that is the case, just as I feel compassion for Sarah Palin.
We collectively keep lowering the bar when it comes to politics. The real question is how much lower can one go when one is alreadly wallowing in the mud?
Mark,
noted. Thank you.
This stuff with Palin's daughter's situation needs to stop immmediately, and from both sides. Portsiders that continue this line of inquiry, and Conservatives that play this up with some sort of positive, pro-life spin both need to shut the hell up and let the Palin family deal with this matter privately.
It isn't like there aren't much larger issues for all of us to deal with in re Palin: we now have an expanding trooper-gate investigation with new news that Palin is lawyering-up, we have the news that Palin apparently lied in her Friday speech about her purported opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, we have another women claiming that SHE was Miss Congeniality at the 1984 Miss Alaska contest (and can prove it), we have the latest news that Gov. Palin is a former member in the secessionist Alaska Independence Party (why does she hate America so much?), and most recently, the news that the McCain campaign is only now sending in a vetting team.
These are substantiave issues, and you all can decide just how consequential these stories are. But any way you look at it, collectively they show that John McCain didn't do any serious vetting of Palin before he invited her to join his ticket. This was the first major decision McCain made as the nominee, and he has botched it. Do we really need 4 more years of shoot-from-the-hip decision making in the Oval Office?
Fundamentally, the burgeoning Palin kerfufle(s) are about John McCain, and what this rash decision says about his judgment. The salient issues of the Palin pick are three-fold:
1) Can the Governor be trusted to speak the truth?
2) How competent is McCain when we see that he picked a candidate without any serious vetting of issues that could have been readily sniffed out in a few hours on the Internet by most tech-savvy high-school students?
3) Did McCain really put "Country First" when he opted to bring an unknown commodity on board as his VP pick, or was he merely taking the politically expedient path because Palin was like Johnny Bravo (Gratuitous Brady Bunch reference) and fit the pantsuit?
These are the central questions that now need to be focused on. The answers so far, in my opinion are: 1) Palin cannot be trusted to tell the truth; 2) McCain's pick of Palin demonstrates a frightening lack of competence that we haven't seen since George McGovern chose Thomas Eagleton in 1972; and 3) McCain obviously did not live upo to his campaign's credo when making the Palin pick.
I made the case back on Friday that I thought Palin was a rash choice, but I had no idea just how right I was. I am not bragging; I am stunned. Tell me I am wrong, but don't tell me these are not serious and substantiave issues.
I don't know if you guys can see this on your side right now, but your boy's campaign is about to implode. McCain only has two days to extract Palin, and given the Base's Palin crush, he better make it fast and clean.
Rich
Rich,
I need links for every one of those claims. Show me where you are getting this stuff. On the first one, you'll have to explain to me why she shouldn't hire a lawyer if she's being investigated, or why that's particularly ominous. My goodness, is she supposed to face an inquiry without legal counsel? You aren't claiming that, I hope.
Rich,
I think I found the source of much of what you argued: the article from Elisabeth Bumiller of the NYT.
The Alaska Independence Party thing will be a non-starter; the McCain campaign already has documentation demonstrating that Palin has been a Republican since 1982 and never changed her registration; sounds like Bumiller bought the argument from the AIP people without verifying it independently. Heck Rich, you know when I became a member of the Republican Party for the first time? This year. So the bottom line on that one is it isn't true. Kinda like the non-affair affair they went with on McCain earlier.
I have been able to independently verify that someone else was Miss Congeniality. Turns out it was Neil Kinnock.
McCain did have her vetted; perhaps not as well as they could have, but they did have her vetted. They've released documentation on that, too. I understand they are doing further vetting now, but they did vet her.
The Bridge to Nowhere stuff is debatable; she may have supported it at one point, but it is undeniable that she killed it later on. I further understand that both Obama and Biden voted for it, so that dog is not likely to hunt, either.
To be honest, a lot of this stuff looks pretty evanescent to me; I sincerely doubt that McCain's campaign is going to implode over any of this. This isn't Tom Eagleton at all and, truth be told, if McGovern had hung tough he could have gotten by with keeping Eagleton on the ticket.
I'm not worried about any of it.
Rich,
A quick reminder that printing things without substantiation is libel. Perhaps you too should lawyer up.
Mark,
I am going to ignore the moron that doesn't post his/her name below. People who have very limited knowledge of libel and slander laws, but like to invoke them anyways crack me up. Hey genius, I bet you used to kick other kids off your property when you were a child.
I had not read the Bumiller article until you called my attention to it. I was basing my observations on things I read in 4 pretty notable blogs:
Ben Smith's at Politico:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0908/The_Palin_chronicles.html
Hilzoy's at Obsidian Wings:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/09/curiouser-and-c.html
And two articles by Jake Tapper at ABC:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/members-of-frin.html
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/another-aip-off.html
Regards,
Rich
Anonymous,
Well, no, it's not libel, especially with a public figure. And it's my blog and I'm going to let Rich's comments stand, so I guess I'll have to lawyer up, too. ;)
Thanks for the links, Rich. Will read tonight and, if necessary, comment further.
Best,
Mark
Rich,
An update -- Tapper has now stepped away from the AIP piece on Palin in the face of the evidence and is now saying that Palin's husband has been a member of the party in the past. So we'll retract that one, right? Somehow the headline "Todd Palin, Longtime Former AIP Member" seems a hell of a lot less ominous, no?
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/the-alaska-divi.html
Rich,
I checked the link on the Miss Congeniality business, too. A gossip columnist in St. Louis? C'mon, dude, don't bring that crap in here.
Rich,
The comment was meant to be tongue and cheek, but clearly it hit a nerve. To be perfectly honest it should hit a nerve. To spread rumors and innuendos and things that you know either aren't true, or may not be true to further your cause is really pretty pathetic. It may not be libelous, but it is clearly pathetic.
Anonymous,
You hit no nerve here. You merely amused me. And your lame attempt to dismiss your earlier misinformed statement is doubly amusing.
I stand by what I wrote earlier. The only pathetic thing one her is the person who never signs their name. The Palin/AIP story has been mostly substantiated.
Rich
Rich (If that even is you real name, posting a first name is not courage, real courage would be posting your last name, or perhaps posting a non-anonymous blog),
I'm done commenting on your posts. I'll part with one last saying from Confucius: "It is far better to keep one's mouth shut and perceived an idiot, than to remove it and remove all doubt." I'll leave it to Mr D's readers to decide whether the saying should be applied to you, me or perhaps even both of us.
I'll not post my name because I don't want your "friends" showing up at my house. After reading everything that I have read, I'm convinced that your crowd has a bad case of situation ethics. The end justfies the means, and while I have used the word before, that is beyond pathetic.
Congratulations, Rich, you have squelched another person's right to free speech.
Tim
Tim,
cut and run, and then blame it on the guy you are debating. That makes a whole lot of sense. Based on your understanding of libel law, you never really understood the concept of free speech to begin with. Good riddance.
Rich Kerwin
Oak Lawn, IL
Rich,
FWIW, if Tim is the Tim I think he is, you're misreading him. And my guess is that if you guys weren't talking politics you would have a great conversation.
No matter how this ends up, November 5 can't come fast enough. But in the meantime, as was said in the other thread, game on.
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