Sarah Palin’s daughter is 17 and pregnant.
I’m not sure if that’s funny or tragically, tragically funny. Or, as our friend The Lazy Cartoonist put it, Bristol Palin is apparently open for drilling.
Feministing did a fine job of making the political hay that’s there to be made.
I don’t find her pregnancy particularly funny. We’re talking about two young kids (don’t forget the baby’s father). Imagine being seventeen & being subject to national ridicule. It’s no more funny than when the media was targeting Chelsea Clinton’s for her physical appearance? It’s politics; leave the kids out of it. I understand the irony, but…
To be honest, I feel badly for Bristol Palin & the baby’s father. Imagine being 17 & the object of national attention for such a personal matter. It was mean when the media focused on Chelsea Clinton’s looks, & it’s mean to make fun of an accidental teen pregnancy. Kids don’t get to choose their parents.
Yeah, hey, Sarah Palin, how’s that abstinence-only education working out for ya!? Really works, doesn’t it?
I loved watching the GOP spokespersons yesterday as they sat in the empty convention hall: They had frozen, optimistic smiles and just said(over and over…and over) “She’s qualified! She’s qualified! It’s a private family matter! She’s better qualified than Joe Biden or Barack Obama! She’s qualified”
Methinks they doth protest too much.
I had a wierd moment talking about her with my Dad(I was visiting him, as his “son”) when I mentioned that she was lierally for taking rights away from gay Alaskans; I:e domestic partner stuff that companies had granted in the workplace. “What’s wrong with that? I don’t like seeing men kissing and girls kissing..”
I told him where I stood. he changed the subject….(sigh) Not likely to come out trans to him in this lifetime..he’s 86.
Anyway..Barack did the right thing declaring Bristol off limits, but in this spin-cycle media world, TMZ and Insider will sooooo go there, again and again. Did you see her boy friend’s myspace page? He describes himself as a “fuckin’ redneck” and has no plans to have children….They grow up so fast.
There’s also an interesting piece on HuffPo by Sidney Blumenthal that says that there was a pissing match between Karl Rove and McCain over the VP choice; Rove recomended Romney(not baggage-free but vetted with a capital “V”) and McCain wanted Palin.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sidney-blumenthal/why-palin-mccain-v-rove_b_122841.html
These are a couple of teens who will have to live with the consequences of their actions (whether that would be their choice, or the parents’ choice). Fair enough. But I think kids should be off-limits where personal issues are concerned. It was mean when some folks went on about how “ugly” Chelsea Clinton was, & it’s mean to make Bristol Palin the butt of a nation’s jokes. They’re kids, at a sensitive age; they didn’t have the luxury of choosing their parents, or their very public situation. I understand irony, but it’s time to back-off.
Simply put: Palin is a goddamned hypocrite.
No kid gets the parents they’re stuck with, that’s true. Ask Brisket Palin when its born.
There are a host of larger issues here: the choice thing that Helen mentioned, the whole abstinence thing, the “vetting” McCain did, and, let’s face it, there’s the soon-to-be grandmother knowing that this was in the oven and agreeing to run and place that spotlight on her kid anyway. What else? Premarital sex–check.
The kid, bless her, is a posterchild, literally, for everything that is wrong with the conservative religious republicans. And if they chose to hold up this candidate and this family almost entirely because of her family credentials, then of course there’s going to be blow back. SP knew this was going to be the game going in.
Shit, though. If I were Brittle Palin, I’d be moving out, moving away, talking to media, distancing myself from a family that put her in the crosshairs of this argument.
Also: The cruelest, crudest jokes can reveal the deepest truths. And they’re fucking funny.
We both have daughters around that age, Truff. I certainly wouldn’t want my daughter hung out to dry because of my own misguided beliefs. You’re right. Sarah Palin dragged her daughter in to this situation, but we don’t have to make it any worse on the kid than it already is. Being a teenager is emotional hard work. I would hope the progressive impulse would be to help the weak, powerless & unfranchised — not making fun at their expense.
I think it’s a friendly joke. I mean, she did get laid, you know? You don’t get pregnant otherwise.
What I do think is that Dems in general are respectful & cool about things like this, even when there is plenty of political hay to be made, & so we lose.
The cruelty of a mother using her daughter as a means to get elected / nominated is far more cruel than Dems pointing out that maybe her pregnancy proves that abstinence education doesn’t work. imho.
Or, for example, having her son leave for Iraq on September 11…..?
It’s a mess, and the daughter is caught in the middle of it. I feel sorry for the daughter having this dragged out in public.
You can argue, though, that this really proves McCain is a maverick. He didn’t let common sense interfere with his desire to make a splash. For all the times that Bill Clinton was accused of doing what would play in the polls, McCain has done something with his VP pick that’s several orders of magnitude above anything that any previous president has done in this regard. It came across to me as so cynical, shameless and ham-handed that it blew any respect I had for the man. It almost feels like he’s saying “This is my last chance to be president, I’ll have to do anything to win,” irrespective of what’s the best for the country.
“Also: The cruelest, crudest jokes can reveal the deepest truths. And they’re fucking funny.”
But they’re still cruel.
By the way, Fred Thompson is an asshole.
OK, sorry…. I hate Joe Lieberman more than him anyway…
Refresh my memory,but wasn’t the complaint about Obama that he just talked to make everyone feel good and he had no substance? As far as I can tell, the reason the Repubs like Sarah Palin is that she makes them all feel good; hunter, mom, Christian woman from,dern it, a hard-workin’ family…
Just checking…
when it comes to republican politics like those espoused by the Palins, I don’t take prisoners. Nothing is off limits because they themselves placed no limits on this game. I’m not saying it’s pretty or fair or even nice. It’s an asshole thing to do, yessirree, no doubt about it. I also think, as Carlin once said, everything can be made fun of.
You know what else? I know that the daughter thing is over the top, but goddammit, I am sick to death of democrats being fucking wusses when it comes to presidential elections. I want anger and fire, I want someone to throw some heat at these fucknards. Palin’s Pregnancy Palace is a perfect target in so many ways, especially if she (the daughter) is anything like the children of the hypocritical religious conservative wackaloons I knew in high school.
Even better. We need a movie about Brico Palin, and her choice to keep her republican hellspawn.
“Juneau”
i agree with buddha: the kids should be off-limits. and this from someone who once created and directed and acted in a play about the global gag rule which used jenna bush as the main character.
how many of us line up with our parents? i certainly wouldn’t want to be in any way associated with one of mine.
and how often do kids follow their parents rules/politics? sometimes they do, but sometimes they emphatically don’t.
i hear the desire for anger and fire, but i think bristol palin is the wrong target.