{"id":87,"date":"2009-07-13T16:11:38","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T16:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/levi-johnston-media-whore-or-palin-family-confessor.html"},"modified":"2009-07-13T16:11:38","modified_gmt":"2009-07-13T16:11:38","slug":"levi-johnston-media-whore-or-palin-family-confessor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/levi-johnston-media-whore-or-palin-family-confessor.html","title":{"rendered":"Levi Johnston: Media Whore Or Palin Family Confessor?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Is he seeking revenge or defending his good name?&nbsp;To hear Levi tell it, he&#8217;s just clearing the air. Take a look at this clip from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/\">msnbc<\/a>:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><iframe loading=\"lazy\" height=\"339\" width=\"425\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/22425001\/vp\/31887627#31887627\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;\"><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>Wow, he&#8217;s got a <span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic;\">ton<\/span> to say about the personal finances of the Palin family and some eyebrow-raising opinions on whether the soon-to-be-former governor is qualified to run for president now that she&#8217;s &#8220;quit on Alaska.&#8221; He seems very happy and relaxed in the media spotlight, and not at all shy about lobbing accusations and innuendoes at the family that pulled him into the spotlight.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div>Plus, as we&#8217;ve seen, he&#8217;s perfectly willing to&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.people.com\/people\/article\/0,,20282266,00.html\" style=\"text-decoration: underline; \">pose shirtless<\/a>&nbsp;with his brand-new baby for magazines, and has been known to trash talk his former fiancee Bristol as well as the rest of the Palins. I think it&#8217;s safe to say this isn&#8217;t a shy guy.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>To me, his media appearances seem highly unethical. On the one hand, I get where a fella should defend himself when a powerful family has it in for him. And theoretically, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with cashing in on one&#8217;s 15 minutes of fame, either. (Tacky, yes, but unethical&#8230;? Not quite.) But on the other, there&#8217;s a baby involved here (and a teenaged girl). To me, these innocent lives trump pretty much every other consideration.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Much as Palin&#8217;s woes cause me perhaps more merriment than they should, I think it&#8217;s wrong for a family member (or almost family member) to go shooting his mouth off and airing dirty laundry the way Levi is doing, most especially when he and the Palins are and will always remain linked biologically by poor little Tripp. There&#8217;s a moral high road here, and Levi doesn&#8217;t appear to be on it.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>But maybe this 19-year-old boy is simply proving to be better&nbsp;than his almost-mother-in-law&nbsp;at spinning the media to his advantage in an ongoing feud not of his own making. Maybe he&#8217;s just defending himself, and winning?<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-weight: bold; \"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic; \">What do you think&#8230; Does Levi have a right to capitalize on Sarah Palin&#8217;s political and personal implosion? Or should he keep his tripp&#8211;I mean trap&#8211;shut?<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;\"><br \/><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is he seeking revenge or defending his good name?&nbsp;To hear Levi tell it, he&#8217;s just clearing the air. Take a look at this clip from msnbc: Wow, he&#8217;s got a ton to say about the personal finances of the Palin family and some eyebrow-raising opinions on whether the soon-to-be-former governor is qualified to run for&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,22,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-hillary-fields","category-celebrity-behavior","category-political-ethics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Levi Johnston: Media Whore Or Palin Family Confessor? - Everyday Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/2009\/07\/levi-johnston-media-whore-or-palin-family-confessor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Levi Johnston: Media Whore Or Palin Family Confessor? - Everyday Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Is he seeking revenge or defending his good name?&nbsp;To hear Levi tell it, he&#8217;s just clearing the air. 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She attended St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she studied classics and philosophy, and then respectfully declined to spend the rest of her life in an ivory tower. Instead, she turned to the life of a writer and editor, penning three romance novels published by St. Martin's Press and contributing features to such periodicals as Cosmopolitan magazine. Her fascination with the moral dilemmas that crop up in everyday life--and the many intriguing ways people handle them--has always colored her writings. Now, that interest is leading her to take the discussion online; where, hopefully, the addition of reader feedback will bring these quotidian quandaries--and their potential solutions--vibrantly to life. When she's not plumbing the ethical mysteries of humanity, her passions include cooking (especially baking), origami, kittens, reading, watching really bad television and playing online scrabble. (And no, she doesn't cheat... much.)","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/author\/hfields"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/everydayethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}