You know, I can make a personal decision not to talk about the fact that Gov. Sarah Palin’s 17-year old daughter, Bristol Palin, is five-months pregnant. I have no desire to exploit or criticize a 17-year old girl. But it doesn’t matter what decision I make. The Palins made the decision to turn this into a campaign issue when they accepted the nomination. The McCain campaign says that they knew about this and were okay with it. They are blaming left-wing blogs for forcing them to make this disclosure through our rumor-mongering about Sarah Palin’s spring pregnancy. Do they expect us to believe that they could have avoided disclosing that Bristol Palin was pregnant if only a few diarists had not been spreading around conspiracy theories?
Let me disclose something. Bloggers and progressive activists talk to each other and strategize together. We didn’t want to touch the Sarah Palin pregnancy story with a 10-foot pole and the overwhelming consensus was to strongly discourage anyone that was running with the rumors. These rumors were started in the spring by Republicans in Alaska and not by the progressive blogosphere. We stifled the story as much as we could without deleting people’s diaries.
Even now, go over to Atrios and you’ll see him asking the media to back off of the story about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and to please respect her privacy. That’s our first instinct because we have progressive values. People’s sex lives should be private. We know of gay Republicans whose privacy we respect because they do not engage in hypocrisy and vote against gay rights. The child of a politician, especially a minor, is off limits, even when all can see the natural consequences of opposing contraception and promoting abstinence-only education. Some of us won’t be able to resist pointing out that hypocrisy. But I hope we will all do our best to give Bristol Palin her privacy and her dignity.
What this revelation does is make me angry. I’m angry that John McCain did not vet his running mate. I’m angry that Sarah Palin didn’t put her daughter first and decline the invitation to run for higher office. I’m angry that a 17-year old girl has been interjected into our national conversation over who would make a better team to run our country. I’m angry that the Republicans are trying to blame this revelation on left-wing bloggers who went out of their way to be respectful and live up to our own values.
This is tabloid politics. This is not serious politics. And it pisses me off.
I guess we chose to write about the same story, though our takes on it are somewhat different.
Quoting Barack Obama: Big elections about small things.
It’s really all Obama’s fault for being such an upstanding candidate. If there was only any really juicy scandals about him they wouldn’t have to invent so many.
The Republicans are only disclosing their own shortcomings to expose what jerk Obama is for leading such a clean life.
just say “no” doesn’t work look at Bristol Palin. A child out of wedlock. I think Christian Conservatives should wonder why they didn’t get Gov. Huckabee.
Off Topic: Regis and Kathy Lee effect & John and Sara..
two old men paired with younger women to make the old man look more vibrant and younger. I once read this as to why Regis always has a younger female co-host.
I’m angry too, mostly that conservatives can be so hypocritical that they will excuse anything John McCain and Sarah Palin do, no matter how much it differs from their (conservative) professed values, which anyone else better not stray from, even if they don’t share them.
Amen. That’s the point of my post in a nutshell. Thank you.
LOL, hadn’t read yours yet. No wonder I like your blogging so much — we think alike. 😉
Well, you might be talking about abstinence here, but I once heard a young woman say that she got pregnant by swimming in the ocean. It must have been the salt water, she claimed, because she was a virgin.
She’s still not qualified.
tabloid news..I report (or give you the link) you decide..she’s flaca..skinny for being so far along.
http://www.adn.com/politics/story/339576.html
The fact that the baby has Down syndrome points virtually definitively to Sarah Palin and not her daughter being the mother. Down syndrome is caused by a chromosomal anomaly, and is present at conception. The number one causal factor in Down syndrome is maternal age. Every woman over 35 is at significant risk of producing a Down child, and the risk increases as maternal age increases. Down syndrome is extremely rare with very young mothers. Sarah Palin is 44 years old, and therefore at high risk of producing a Down syndrome child. Her daughter is 17 and has a very low risk of producing a Down syndrome child.
Furthermore, if Sarah Palin had been faking a pregnancy, would she not have done a better job of looking pregnant than has been suggested, and would she not have chosen a more convenient and credible time and manner in which to fake the birth?
Let’s use a little common sense here, please.
I understand the age factor, but I have a friend who had one normal child then conceived two DS children when she was in her late 20’s. She aborted the second one; the first had many other problems and had to be cared for in a state facility.
Not only that but…how does a woman fake breastfeeding an infant? When she goes into a room to pump, and comes out with a bottle of milk, I suppose she had that in hiding in her purse?
I really can’t believe the wingnuttiness sometimes.
thats why i put “I report you decide”..but she is skinny for 8 months along.
Says something about Palin’s character when she is willing to sacrifice her daughter’s privacy and possibly embarrassment for the sake of personal political gain. I’ve always carried the thought that women who enter beauty contests are a little….well, you fill in the blank. Mine is “egocentric.”
I’m sorry but left-wing bloggers did NOT go out of their way to be respectful. What was going on at Kos was despicable. It should have been taken down.
Not only was the speculation itself harmful to a child, but it was so ridiculous on its face I fear the entire site has been tarnished by all the tinfoil.
And it wasn’t just Kos. I batted down rumors on a Dems Abroad listserve I’m on, yet people still persisted in posting that nonsense, or asking for “proof” it wasn’t true, in the true vein of “when did you stop beating your wife?”
I am ashamed of us sometimes.
“the speculation itself…was so ridiculous on its face“
Indeed! See my comment above.
I don’t know what happened at Kos, but I’m am far more embarrassed for America by the wingnuts on the right who want to nuke all the Moooslims and shoot all the liberals and spy on my credit card purchases (unless it’s used to buy a gun), than I am by most liberal sites, even Kos. That’s said I’m sorry so many felt the need to express schadenfreude or worse over there. The young girl doesn’t deserve it, even if her mother and McCain do.
This just gets more crazy. You cannot tell me McCain knew this and still picked her for veep. So that tells me he is even less competent then Bush. That is really scary, this isn’t a game he wants to run the country. WTF?
Don’t feel bad about the Bristol Palin story not being serious politics, because it is. Abstinence only sex education is serious politics, Bristol is just one of possibly millions of victims of this pernicious policy for which the end result could have been easily predicted. Her mother made it worse by accepting the nomination, bloggers had nothing to do with that.
Setting the obvious hypocrisy aside, I’d say that Palin coming out and letting the public know what is going on with her daughter and how their family is going to support her is the right thing to do because obviously blogs and newscenters of all types are making this into a sensational tabloid item.
I think that any progressive or liberal person would agree that families come in all shapes and sizes and children, healthy children are raised by loving and competent parents of all persuasions and in all types of environments. The Palin family is accepting the situation as it is and is moving forward in the way they have decided is best for all of them.
If you guys are gonna go off on Palin and her family for for making the best out of a difficult situation then I hope to read the criticism of Barack Obama’s upbringing real soon because if his wasn’t an unconventional and often difficult upbring then I don’t know what is. Funny thing though, the guy turned out well enough to be one step away from the presidency of the United States.
As far as I’m concerned Palin’s family and how they deal with the same internal family issues we all deal with and seek to keep private should be off limits, period. Otherwise the hypocrisy bites both ways.
Without commenting on the veracity or the appropriateness of the “Palin’s Son Is Her Grandson” meme, I hereby make an offer to any GOP strategists who might be reading:
If they will denounce all of the stories about Barack Obama’s patriotism, his character, his religion and the like that they have created, and work as hard as they can to quash them in the forums where they have influence, I’ll do the same for the Palin’s Baby stories.
Think that’s a fair deal?
Boo, can you point me back to where this was started by Republicans in Alaska? Not doubting you, just want to show the source to someone else.
Also, to be fair, until this turned up on the Kos I knew nothing about it and now a Google on it releases a avalanche.
What angers me though is this is stuff that damages McCain that is off base for Obama or anyone else to talk about. She is an intelligent, nice, pretty, (mildly) accomplished woman who has a pretty teenage daughter carrying a baby she will keep. Nice.
In no way fit to serve and McCain’s nuts for picking her but to say it too strongly and you make her a sympathetic figure.
It came out of Lyda Green’s camp, and it was of course very backhanded, as in this ostensible congratulatory note in the Anchorage Daily News:
I have sources with Mark Begich’s campaign that confirm that Green’s camp was responsible for spreading this rumor. They aren’t running against her but they nevertheless take an interest in all things political in Alaska. Lyda Green is also the woman that was called a bitch on talk radio while Sarah Palin giggled.
We’re talking about the spreading of rumors here, so I can’t just give you a hyperlink where you’ll see a source for the rumor.
It doesn’t anger me, it scares the shit out of me.
I don’t care about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. I don’t care about Sarah Palin’s down syndrome baby. I don’t care that she wants to teach creationism in our schools. I don’t care about any of that, because I don’t think she’s going to be on the ticket long enough to matter.
What scares me is this is just one more example of the utter, abysmal, terrifying, total lack of judgement of John McCain. No one with two brain cells to rub together would have picked Palin for a running mate. I see no evidence that she was vetted at all, by anybody. An hour with google would have told anyone who bothered to look that she was a walking disaster as even a potential running mate.
Nobody vetted her. If anyone had, she wouldn’t have made it past the talking points stage. John McCain pulled her name out of his ass without a moment’s forethought. He heard or read some combination of governor, hockey mom, reformer, maybe a hint of creationist and/or pro-lifer and chose her off the top of his head.
Never mind Sarah Palin or her family. Does anyone still seriously imagine that John McCain should be allowed anywhere near the Whitehouse or the red phone or the red button or the launch codes or anything else more momentous than a can opener? If this guy still has even a remote chance of being elected we’re in deeper shit than I thought.
Amen.
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Cindy McCain’s company hosted the location in vetting Sarah Palin in Arizona.
Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager and the person at the point of the vice presidential process, said there was no abrupt change in the final hours. Nor, he said, was Palin selected without having gone through the full vetting process that was done for other finalists. That process included reviews of financial and other personal data, an FBI background check and considerable discussion among the handful of McCain advisers involved in the deliberations.
“Nobody was vetted less or more than anyone in the final stages, and John had access to all that information and made the decision,” Davis said. “It’s really not much more complicated than that.”
In part to blunt criticism that McCain had pulled a last-minute switch and turned to Palin without all the information he may have needed to make a decision, some of those advisers shared details Saturday, mostly on a not-for-attribution basis.
CINDY MCCAIN PLAYED A KEY ROLE PICKING A VP
Six people were involved in the secretive deliberations that led to Palin’s selection: McCain; his wife, Cindy; campaign manager Davis; longtime confidant Mark Salter; senior adviser Steve Schmidt; and key strategist Charlie Black. In addition, Washington lawyer A.B. Culvahouse oversaw the vetting.
Davis had spoken with her a number of times. The McCain camp had reviewed everything they could find on her, including videotapes of her public speeches and interviews. “She makes a great speech,” one adviser observed.
Last Sunday night, McCain talked to Palin by phone from Arizona, in what aides called a somewhat-lengthy call, which prompted him to ask her to come to Arizona later in the week.
She flew into Flagstaff on Wednesday and that night conferred with Schmidt and Salter. On Thursday morning about 7 a.m., she, Salter, Schmidt and a Palin aide climbed into an SUV with tinted windows to begin the 45-minute drive to McCain’s retreat in Sedona.
There McCain greeted her, offered her a cup of coffee, and the two of them walked off to a bend in the creek on the property where chairs and a bench rest. The spot is one of McCain’s favorites, with a hawk’s nest above. McCain and Palin talked alone and then were joined by Cindy McCain.
Aides said Cindy McCain played a key role throughout the process of picking a vice president.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."