Gov. Palin's kid is preggers. So f#@&ing WHAT?!?

[thatcrazycajun]

Will someone please explain to me why the pregnancy of the daughter of the vice-presidential candidate of the Republican Party is a news story at all?! One report is actually headlined—so help me Ghu—"Gustav, Pregnancy Shape RNC." We already know she's going to keep the baby, that John McCain knew in advance of picking her mom, that the Governor herself is adamantly "pro-life" to the point of keeping her own most recent baby even after it was clear it would be what these days is euphemistically termed "a special-needs child." What could possibly make this matter so consequential that the TV and radio networks and cable channels must waste an entire news cycle on it?

Is it that the pregnant daughter is herself only 14 years old? Does the (non-)news somehow render Gov. Palin unfit? How? Is it that the GOP's self-marketing as the "family values" party is somehow undermined by this? Are the newsies just cheesed off that she didn't announce this little detail at once upon her selection? And what effing difference does it make who the father of the fetus in question is? And would they be making such a big deal of the pregnancy if it were Sen. Barack Obama's daughter, or Joe Biden's? Seriously, I want to know.

Talk about the candidates themselves all you want—their policies, their pasts, their accomplishments or lack thereof. But their families, friends and associates, as Sen. Obama has so excellently put it, are and should remain "off limits." Anything to do with the spouses, offspring, cousins, business partners etc. has no bearing whatsodamnever on the campaign and is not worth a single drop of ink or a single second of airtime.

So to Katie, Brian, Charlie, Wolf et al.: Drop it already and move on. This is the sort of thing that keeps alive the longstanding accusations by the right of "liberal media bias"...even when they have not the least basis in fact.

Comments

Pay Attention Joe. Pay Attention Barack

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

If she produced a child at 44, I want to know if she believes in birth control, because birth control is a political issue. I also want to know her views on the government's obligations to the disabled. Do the disabled children of rich people get special treatments that their parents can afford, while the disabled children of poor people get nothing? Who is the boss in her family? If it's her, then I want to know how that squares with Christian notions of patriarchy. If it's the husband, then I want to know his values and beliefs about all the issues that face the nation, and I want to know who will actually be the vice president. I want to see her tax returns. I want to see his tax returns.

Every point and then some.
Let's put her under pressure.

Re: Pay Attention Joe. Pay Attention Barack

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree with you on this. This is just exactly the sort of thing that killed Geraldine Ferraro's historic candidacy way back when, after the newsies got wind of her husband's shady real-estate deals. It deprived us of someone who could have made quite a good vice president, and it's not fair to the candidate. If we object when it's our candidate, we have to do the same when it's theirs, no matter how much we may despise them or their views. Ethical consistency demands nothing less.

Re: Pay Attention Joe. Pay Attention Barack

[shelleybear.livejournal.com]

Every point posed is valid.
You don't think she should answer them?
I won't touch the whole "Whose kid is it anyway?" issue.
I want answers on those points and WHY she cut funding to schools and the library.
Why she flip-flopped on the "Bridge to Nowhere".
These are all valid issues.
If you won't give her a free pass, then what questions ARE fair game?

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

I must register my respectful disagreement. The candidate is running on a platform of "family values," and if her own family is not the best example, that is, IMHO, a legitimate area of inquiry for the press. If this is damaging to the candidate's family, well, what Harry Truman said about heat and kitchens still stands.

As a voter, if someone running for office has a double standard, one for their image and the other at home, I want to know.

To be fair, this revelation does not change my opinion of the candidate, nor how I may vote, and if some similar scandal came out about Joe Biden, probably still wouldn't change my vote.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, she doesn't have a double standard: when someone in her family gets pregnant as an unmarried teenager, she expects the same followup behavior as when a stranger gets pregnant as an unmarried teenager. And if anything, the fact that her teenager got pregnant only serves to show that she also practices the same policy about what sort of sex ed to teach at home as she demands in her political role -- that is, the kind which doesn't work.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Good point, but the little matter of the initial deception on the whole matter causes me to see hypocrisy anyway. What of the dad-to-be - did anyone ask him if he wanted his name plastered all over the national news, and isn't that a foreseeable consequence of accepting the nomination? I bet there are reporters all over this in Alaska talking to high school kids trying to find out who the lucky winner is.

"Family values" in the traditional sense means being a stay-at-home mom - I have to wonder if any conservatives are thinking that if mom HAD stayed home with the kids, this might not have happened.

Sorry to engage in so much Palintology.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether anyone asked him. Since the family has known for a few months already, it seems, someone may well have asked him, as part of a family conference on what Palin should do if offered the nomination. I'm disinclined to psychoanalyze someone else's home life unless they've invited it by blunt hypocricy, and Palin hasn't. She's been consistent, however annoying. I'll leave it to her pet wingnuts to decide whether they want to psychoanalyze her home life, which they're usually more sanguine about doing to anyone than I am, and I won't cry if she loses some of them because of it, but that's an internal squabble I suspect the Democrats would do well to stay out of.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Obama has already said something similar to what you've said, only in fewer words. I honor him for it, but he's not going to stop the media, even though he's cast a pretty tight leash over his own campaign people.

[dsthomas.livejournal.com]

How would he be able to 'stop the media', might I ask?

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Er, he can't, that's what I meant. "He's not going to..." as in, "It's not going to happen that he could..."

Sorry for the ambiguous language.

[cellio]

Why is it news? Because her party runs a "family values" platform and her daughter's behavior conflicts with some of those values, which casts doubt on the effectivity of her parenting. The verbiage-to-relevance ratio is way off, IMO, but I think reporting it (and then moving on) is valid.

I hope that both kids get taken out of play -- this one and the Downs kid. (Do you think we're going to get through this election without hearing how "special" she is to have such an "opportunity", and how, therefore, any woman facing such prospects should be compelled to bring the kid to term and then raise it? If the Republicans bring her youngest kid into play, they are inviting the Dems to bring the oldest in. Let's hope they don't do it.)

[osewalrus.livejournal.com]

Well, her recent rough cut vlog has her saying she supports birth control and not murder.

And Barack Obama's daughters being pregnant would be major news.

But what is going on here is multifold. One is the debate over whether Palin was seriously vetted and what surprises await us. Most of this is pretty small potatoes. Except that the Rs have made a business out of small potatoes and apparently never expected the political wheel to turn. Having gone after such things as Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis, the supposed link between Barack Obama and Ayers, the endless showing of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other trivialities, the fact that Palin's kid is a "fallen woman" and that her husband had a DUI charge a gazillion years ago is -- sadly -- fair game. To _not_ cover it would be to open oneself to accusations of bias (see the media self-flagellation for showing discretion during the Edwards love child story).

But of course, it is also part of the strategy by Rove and co. to create a martyrdom of Palin for the benefit of a lethargic base. Do not blame the media for running true to form anymore than you blame rivers for running down hill.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

I recall Spider Robinson's comment on how tossing aside the idea that some things are off limits can bite you in the, er, butt, citing this scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:

Butch Cassidy: No, no, not yet. Not until me and Harvey get the rules straightened out.
Harvey Logan: Rules? In a knife fight? No rules.
[Butch immediately kicks Harvey in the groin]
Butch Cassidy: Well, if there ain't going to be any rules, let's get the fight started. Someone count. 1,2,3 go.

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

'And Barack Obama's daughters being pregnant would be major news."

The Obama girls are what, 7 and 10? Yeah, that would be major news, all right. And rape. The Divine keep them from any such fate.

This is just another indication, though, that Gov. Palin's touted sex-education philosophy - the one she wants to force on MY kids in the public schools I help pay for - doesn't work. If Obama were trying to push a math curriculum that he said would inspire math geniuses, and it were revealed that his girls - raised on this curriculum, without any learning disabilities - had not got the ability to add 2 to 2 and get 4, then I would question that publicly, too.

Normally, yes, one's family life ought to be off limits. UNLESS you are trying to interfere in other people's family lives on the grounds that you know better than they do how to produce a healthy, happy family. If she's going to tell me how I ought to be raising my son, then I want to see clear evidence that she's doing a good job raising her kids, by her standards. If she's going to tell my gay and lesbian friends that they're unfit parents and will raise kids with mental and emotional problems, I want clear evidence that she herself is a fit parent who can raise problem-free kids. (Or at least, inasmuch as that is possible.) Or yes, I'm going to call her a hypocrite.

If Geraldine Ferraro were arguing that women ought to follow HER particular faith and HER particular moral rules when selecting a husband, then her choice of spouse would indeed be a valid political question.

That said, I think Obama's doing the right thing, in a political and strategic sense, by stepping out of this publicly and visibly. His restraint gives him the high road here, quite visibly so. Palin's hypocrisy is clear here. Anyone who doesn't see it now won't see it if he wags his finger at her, and will be more inclined to leap to her defense.

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

To a large degree, i say so freaking what. However, the Repugs do support an abstinence only education stance & I think that daughter's preg does show the um efficacy of that stance.

But mos def they don't need to mention it all day every day.... but then we did have to hear about Anna doesn't get any less relevant than that Nicole all day every day for weeks. The news networks do that kinda stuff because Jerry Springer type sexual titillation brings ratings and that is ALL they care about. Let me repeat that.... ratings and market share is ALL they care about. Using the public's broadband for the public's important business is not a concern for them. They're wrong and they suck.

If it were Obama's daughter it would be even bigger news because it would fit into stereotypes about black women being sexed crazed animals who have 7 different baby daddys. If it were Biden's daughter it'd still be news because she so young because to get pregnant one has to have seks and seks sells advertising air time.

Also, if they didn't waste time on this then they'd have to think of other things to talk about other than Bush's massive assfuck administration and the horrific and horrifically expensive failure in Iraq which neither side wants because they all voted for it in an effort to look like good little conformist patriotic sheep who don't question the president ever since 9/11 as we are and will be in perpetual war for a very long time.

[darrenzieger.livejournal.com]

Damn you :P

I just spend 3 fucking hours replying to your post -- so much writing, I decided to post it to my own journal (http://darrenzieger.livejournal.com/38766.html) ... now it's 2:30am, I've got work to do, and while I was at it, apparently the plot has thickened (check for posts by osewalrus or filkertom, I forget where i saw it; I can't think straight...

Anyway. Long post. On my journal. It's late. Me not think or write good anymore. Brain hurts. I want pie. Nightey-night.

[dsthomas.livejournal.com]

What kind of pie!

[mshollie.livejournal.com]

Slight correction here, if I may. Gov. Palin's daughter Bristol is 17, not 14 as you've posted.

That said, so much for abstinence-only sex ed.

[mshollie.livejournal.com]

BTW, may I steal your icon?