Four years ago, Arizona Senator Republican presidential nominee John McCain shocked the world when he chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
McCain and Palin lost their race against Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but Palin has since achieved celebrity status.\u00a0 Among other things, she became a Fox News contributor.<\/p>\n
However, on Wednesday, Fox cancelled its scheduled interviews with the Alaskan governor.<\/p>\n
Palin had planned to appear on Fox to comment on McCain\u2019s speech at this year\u2019s Republican National Convention.\u00a0 Actually, according to her Facebook post, she planned to lavish praise upon him for his \u201cpositive contributions to America\u201d and lament \u201cwhat a biased media unfairly put him through four years ago tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palin said that she was \u201csorry\u201d about the cancellation, but, \u201cmore than any of the other convention speeches,\u201d she \u201clook[ed] forward to hearing\u201d McCain\u2019s \u201cwords to his fellow Americans [.]\u201d<\/p>\n
Fox released a statement to account for the cancellation of Palin\u2019s interviews.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur plans changed based on the fact that the RNC condensed the schedule of speeches from four nights to three.\u00a0 We look forward to having Governor Palin back as soon as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palin continues to maintain a sizable and impassioned following, but it is hard not to wonder whether this latest episode may not be an indication that the lime light that she has enjoyed for the last few years is beginning to slip from her grasp.<\/p>\n
It is also hard not to think that, if so, this might be a well deserved turn of events.<\/p>\n
In spite of her reputation as a traditionalist or conservative, Palin has made some decisions that cast this reputation into doubt.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For one, she continues to praise John McCain.\u00a0 This is telling, for neither in 2008 nor at any time before or since then have self-avowed conservatives regarded McCain as anything other than a \u201cRINO\u201d (Republican in Name Only).\u00a0 Considering that, until he challenged Barack Obama for the presidency, the left-wing media lauded McCain as a \u201cmaverick,\u201d the GOP faithful appeared to have had some reason for their judgment.<\/p>\n
Secondly, McCain\u2019s speech that Palin was anticipating more anxiously than any other was what those who know him have come to expect, a call for a foreign policy that is even more ambitious in scope than what currently exists.\u00a0 Ever quick to dispel audiences of any illusions they may have that foreign policy is secondary in importance to economic woes, McCain remarked:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is said that this election will turn on domestic and economic issues.\u00a0 But what Mitt Romney knows, and what we know, is that our success at home also depends on our leadership in the world.\u201d\u00a0 He continued: \u201cIt is our willingness to shape world events for the better that has kept us safe, increased our prosperity, preserved our liberty and transformed human history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet as such \u201cOld Right\u201d conservatives as Patrick Buchanan and scholar Paul Gottfried have long observed, the sort of foreign policy favored by the likes of McCain and Palin is a species of liberal internationalism.\u00a0 It is the kind of foreign policy that Woodrow Wilson promoted in his quest to \u201cmake the world safe for democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is, it is most definitely not <\/em>conservative.<\/p>\n Thirdly, Palin has furthered the \u201creality\u201d television craze by becoming a reality TV star herself.\u00a0 But the transformation of herself into a pop culture celebrity undoubtedly came at the cost of diminishing the number of people who take her seriously.<\/p>\n Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, Palin didn\u2019t just become a reality TV star herself. She paved the way for her daughter, Bristol, to become one as well.<\/p>\n Bristol Palin, as everyone now knows, conceived a child at the age of 17.\u00a0 When her mother made her debut at the Republican National Convention in 2008, Bristol attended while visibly pregnant.\u00a0 She was accompanied by the child\u2019s father, Levi Johnston, to whom Bristol was supposedly engaged. In December, Bristol gave birth.\u00a0<\/p>\n She and Levi never married.\u00a0 In fact, they have long since broken up.<\/p>\n Since then, Bristol has been almost as visible a public personality as her mother has been. She has been on several television shows.\u00a0 Not including her own reality show, Bristol has also appeared in ABC Family\u2019s, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, <\/em>and Dancing with the Stars.\u00a0 <\/em>She has authored her own memoir, co-starred in a music video, and become a teen pregnancy prevention spokesperson for The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and the Candie Foundation.<\/p>\n Reportedly, the Candie Foundation has paid Bristol more than $262, 000 for her work.<\/p>\n Although Bristol styles herself an advocate of teenage pregnancy prevention<\/em>, critics have expressed concern that her good looks and plush lifestyle may contribute to the glamorization <\/em>of unwed motherhood.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n For example, Bonnie Fuller, former editor-in-chief of YM, <\/em>alluding to the \u201cpicture-perfect\u201d image of a People <\/em>spread in which Bristol appeared, accused her of being \u201cthe poster girl for teen momhood.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n These criticisms are legitimate.\u00a0 Bristol Palin is barely old enough to drink and yet from the time that she was a teenager, she has enjoyed an endless supply of fame and fortune\u2014all because she is an unwed, teenage mother and Sarah Palin is her mother. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The overwhelming majority of unwed teenage mothers who aren\u2019t already celebrities forego opportunities that would have otherwise been available to them. Bristol has reaped opportunities because of her decision.\u00a0 Her mouth may say one thing, but her very public life conveys a strikingly different message.<\/p>\n This is the concern that many have had with Bristol reaping the material fruits of speaking out against teenage pregnancy.<\/p>\n However, that her mother Sarah paved the way for her to do so is what has provoked some conservatives of a more traditional bent to lambast her for being a fraud.\u00a0<\/p>\n Conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel, for instance, wrote in 2009 that whether Bristol marries her child\u2019s father is indeed \u201cour business because the mother and chief enabler and financier of all of this is Bristol Palin\u2019s mother, a woman whom people are touting as a conservative family values person who\u2026has demonstrated that she actually isn\u2019t one.\u201d<\/p>\n As the days of the 2008 presidential contest recede ever further beyond the historical horizon and the media turns its attention to new stars, Sarah Palin just might\u2014and maybe deservedly\u2014find herself fading off into the sunset.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Four years ago, Arizona Senator Republican presidential nominee John McCain shocked the world when he chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.\u00a0 McCain and Palin lost their race against Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but Palin has since achieved celebrity status.\u00a0 Among other things, she became a Fox News contributor. However, on Wednesday,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n