Sarah Palin got attacked because frankly for all her much vaunted parenting skills I think she sucks as a parent.
If my daughter grew up to be knocked up and pregnant at nineteen with a lazy loser for a “baby daddy” I would personally be rightfully embarrassed.
If my daughter grew up to be a graduate of Stanford and Oxford, poised, intelligent and confident I’d be damned proud.
As a fellow mom I honestly despise Sarah Palin. By depriving her daughter of the right to get decent access to sex education and birth control she’s shackled her poor kid to a creep for the rest of her life, forced her to become a parent before she was clearly ready for motherhood and paraded said child around as if Bristol were some sort of role model for young women everywhere when she’s nothing of the sort.
In short Sarah Palin has done a shitty job of parenting and should be ashamed of herself.
The same cannot possibly be said about Chelsea Clinton.
After Rush Limbaugh (that fat fuck) making fun of Chelsea Clinton’s looks at thirteen the Republicans need to shut the fuck up on this one. Sasha and Malia are little kids. I didn’t particularly like Obama’s decision to thrust them in the spotlight by running for office but he did and they deserve to left alone.
You’re looking disingenuous here. cf., Glenn “I’m just askin’ a question, here” Beck.*
Seriously, dude, your side is the side of the angels, here; that’s been well-established. It is not necessary, and in fact it is a distracting waste of your time, talents and energies to try to establish that everyone on your side is, in fact, an angel.
*For clarity’s sake, I’m going to point out that “just calling attention” to the fact that an unfounded accusation has been made is often a strategic way of keeping the idea behind the accusation in the public consciousness. “My opponent has been accused of being a public masticator, and his sister is a notorious thespian.”
I remember following the thread on Kos that morning. (I think it was Labor Day.) People act now like it was baseless and ridiculous to suggest that Trig was actually Bristol’s baby, but the circumstantial case was pretty remarkable.
It hinged on three facts: 1.) Per several reports, Sarah Palin’s staff did not know about her pregnancy until very late in the game. 2.) The story of Trig’s birth seems inexplicable and dangerous, with Palin flying all the way from Texas back to Alaska after rupturing her membranes without even getting checked out by a doctor. 3.) Around the time of Trig’s birth Bristol was reportedly absent from school for five months due to “mono”, one of the time-honored cover stories for disappeared pregnant teenagers.
How can you look at those three pieces of information and not suspect that Sarah might be covering for Bristol? It’s not exactly unheard of, particularly among strongly religious families. The author of the Kos piece was not the only one who put these facts together; one of the big papers in Alaska later said that they had investigated the same possibility long before Palin was the VP nominee and found it lacking.
It didn’t take much deeper probing to find pictures of a pregnant Palin, and of course a few hours later we found out about Bristol’s then-current pregnancy that rendered the question moot. But on the surface it was far from a ridiculous and baseless accusation.
Andrew Sullivan was sort of a lone wolf on the matter among the more respectable bloggers. He accepted that Trig was Sarah’s, but it bugged him that Sarah never outright denied the alternate version of events (or offered any documentary proof) and that she never released her medical records*.
But in terms of the “MSM”, it was never reported as anything but a rumor among bloggers. If anything, I think the MSM glossed over the fact that the case was fairly convincing on the surface.
My theory, which I admit is pure speculation: Palin’s trip from Texas all the way back to Wasilla with ruptured membranes was actually done against medical advice. Her doctor was willing to defend her in the press, but not in the medical record. She also could have had something in her past history that she didn’t want revealed that her medical record would have laid bare.
You’re assuming that a Reuters report existed at all (that has not been established), but if something did exist, then I’d have to see the actual wording and tone of the report to draw any conclusions about it. Reporting simply that there was a mini-blogger storm going on would not be irresponsible reporting, nor would it necessarily be couched in insinuation.
Sullivan identifies himself as conservative, but his political philosophy is actually eccentric. He had enthusiastically endorsed Obama when he started asking about Palin’s medical records. I think he took the issue way too far, especially when it had become obvious that Palin wasn’t releasing her medical records solely to piss him off, so that she could play Victim of Evil Media Elites.
This is exactly the heart of the matter. I still have no good idea why the hell a pregnant woman would make the decisions regarding her pregnancy and delivery that Palin appears to have made. Absent some other reason, like trying to cover up for her daughter’s pregnancy, it strikes me as astoundingly poor judgment and relatively low regard for the healthy birth of her child.
It’s really strange that the fact that her daughter actually was pregnant somehow puts egg on the face of the DailyKos poster or anyone else who raised an eyebrow.
How does that work, Bricker, because it seems to me that a) her decisions were extremely poor AND b) her daughter really was pregnant. How do you get to the conclusion c) Poor Sarah Palin is unfairly attacked by the media? Can you explain?
The problem is not asking the question. The problem is asking the question and acting like it hasn’t been answered when it has. I thought it was perfectly legitimate for people to wonder whether Obama was really born in Hawaii after his grandmother (reportedly, and dubiously so) said something about him being born in Kenya. But once the proof came out that he was born in Hawaii, that should have been it.
The blogger speculation was a legitimate inclusion in a news story, because it was the reason for the announcement of Bristol’s pregnancy. Presumably they would have announced it sooner or later, but when it happened on the same day that the speculation started making the blog rounds, it was clearly a response. But the mainstream press never treated it as anything but debunked blogger speculation–certainly not with the “some say” equivocation that crazy right-wing ideas tend to get (from Fox, at least).
I appreciated that he was keeping the issue from being dropped just because Palin wanted it dropped. Palin claimed that she would release her records and then didn’t, and the media had the responsibility to ask why, but by and large they really didn’t because she was so good at working the refs.
Indeed, I thought covering for Bristol was a far more charitable explanation of the flight home than what we got.
This was actually a false claim about Obama’s Kenyan granmother. During a taped phone conversation being conducted through a translator, she was asked if she was present when Barack was born (notwheherhe was born in Kenya). She initially said yes, not clealy understanding the question. The translator clarified, and then she corrected herself and repeatedly said that Obama had been born in Hawaii. The birthers who did the interview edited out the correction and only put the initial part online to create the false impression. That has led to the pervasiv birther meme that Obama’s grandmother said he was born in Kenya, which she never did.
You are right, though, about the superficial circumstances around Palin’s pregnancy and Bristol’s long absence from school lending an air of prima facie plausibilility to the fake pregnancy rumor that was never presnt for the birther crap.
Levi has said that Palin actually did muse about the possibility of pretending the baby was hers when Bristol first got pregnant, so the idea wasn’t that far fetched at all.
Why wouldn’t I think she applied her own personal philosophy to her daughters?
She’s publically stated she’s against birth control in many circumstances, against abortion and against sex education. Why wouldn’t anyone think her beliefs were the way to she raised her kids?
Honestly, I don’t remember this at all. Can you back those statements up with cites? Not about the abortion part-- I think we can agree she is anti-abortion.
Is she opposed to parents teaching their kids about sex? And she campaigned against that? Now, that would surprise me!
Stop that fucking bullshit. There’s plenty of blue scattered through the middle, and a hell of a lot of red in coastal states. Being a fucking retard knows no regional bounds.
As long as you’re predicting, I’d like Saturday night’s Powerball numbers, please.
Sorry, but as we all know, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and I don’t have the decades long experience with Powerball that I do with this country’s media.
I think you just need to write a book about your life. Then you can just post a link to it as a response to every question. It will make ignoring you that much more convenient.
