One more thing, and then I’m done with Palin, or at least until the next revelation (which’ll could be anything; her husband runs guns for Alaskan secessionists or was Jimmy Jeff’s date at Bohemian Grove – anything). Whatever it is it’s bound to be grubby.
Although Trooper/Sprog/TreasonGate has been great entertainment given the candidate’s expressed religious and political views, the family situation is hardly uncommon. 17 year old daughters do get pregnant (usually by complete dorks and ne’er-do-wells), and especially so when they’ve been kept ignorant of how not to because of a misguided attempt to keep them ‘pure’. It happens. My own sister was a grandmother in her early forties too, a situation which gave me many enjoyable hours of sisterly schadenfreude. Hi Granny!
This time it happened to someone running for veep. Other than the momentary amusement and the justified outrage at continuing Republican hypocrisy, after the first flush of pleasurable derision it’s really no-one’s business, though it does make McCain’s advance vetting look worse than useless.
McCain insists that his VP pick was throroughly investigated and that he knew of Palin minor’s pregnancy before he announced the nomination. He appears to think that makes it all OK.
To me if McCain knew of Palin minor’s pregnancy beforehand, but nominated anyway, that actually makes it much, much worse.
It means Sarah Palin, the woman being projected as future MILF to the nation, simultaneously portrayed as a babe-librarian or a gun-toting survival chick, but primarily marketed by her party as a glossy conglomerate of Ma Walton and Raphael’s Madonna, is a terrible mother. One of the worst.
I know from terrible mothers; I am one. Without going into private family history I can assure readers there’s little you can tell me about awful parenting decisions. That said, I’m apalled.
All of this means that Palin knew very well her daughter was pregnant when she accepted the nomination – and unless she’s been hiding under a rock for the past century she’d have certainly also known that the media, ever hungry for prurient detail, would dive on the story like they would a line of free coke. Even Alaska gets the internet.
She must have known that they’d pry into her child’s private life and even into her pants – how could she not? – yet she accepted the nomination with alacrity. Knowing it would be bound to hurt one of her children, she did it anyway. That’s cold.
Worse still, she and her husband also went on to publicly take any and all decision-making capability regarding herself and her child entirely out of their daughter’s hands.
Not only is Palin making her daughter’s decisions re the pregnancy for her (ie that she will get married and be happy happy happy and photogenic ever after, seemingly regardless of her feelings or that of the putative father) her one criterion for making those decisions appears to be what would advance her political career.
I don’t know about any other parents following this story, but I don’t know one no matter how self-interested, who would so deliberately ruin their child’s future for their own personal advancement.
Parents make some tremendously ill-judged decisions and yes, children suffer because some parents are overly ambitious. But it’s usually a passive kind of harm, not delberate; being elsewhere at important moments, not paying enough attention, fobbing them off with money instead of time, letting them do something dodgy because it was easier than arguing and you’re just so damned tired… but it takes some hardnosed ruthlessness to sacrifice your child’s future to your own interests, publicly, and be so proud of it too.
I certainly don’t condemn Palin because she has five children and I don’t see why someone who does should not be vice-president – neither do I question someone’s ability to do the job because one of those children is disabled and needs extra care. Leaving aside Cheney’s activist vice-presidency it’s not that much of a job and besides, that’s what nannies, schools and nurses are for.
But I absolutely and unequivocally condemn someone who would drag her child through the tabloid mire, deliberately and with malice aforethought. She’s building her own glittering political future on her own child’s ruined hopes.
Nevertheless the right seem in thrall – but then they are well practiced at cognitive dissonance The GOP faithful at the Convention certainly have no problem with it whatsoever. Hypocrisy barely registers. But if McCain and his party think to have secured the undecided, independent woman voter with this transparent ploy then they are very much deluded.
I can’t be the only mother who’s looked at this situation and thought “Jeez, what a complete bitch.”
