{"id":109,"date":"2008-09-01T15:11:08","date_gmt":"2008-09-01T15:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/palins-pregnant-easy-easyits-h.html"},"modified":"2008-09-01T15:11:08","modified_gmt":"2008-09-01T15:11:08","slug":"palins-pregnant-easy-easyits-h","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/09\/palins-pregnant-easy-easyits-h.html","title":{"rendered":"“Palin’s pregnant!” Easy, easy…It’s only her unwed 17-year-old daughter."},"content":{"rendered":"

I had thought the terrifying onslaught of Gustav and the efforts by the GOP to dodge the Katrina bullet–or turn it to McCain’s benefit–would be the story of the day, but the bombshell news that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant is worth addressing given the stakes, and the nexus of religion and politics. A
\n\"Sarah<\/span>nd, well, because it’s irresistible. (WaPocoverage here<\/a> and NYTimes here<\/a>. And a reader sends this photo from a McCain daughter’s blog, apparently of Bristol, holding baby Trig, from a People magazine shoot, as evidence that she was obviously pregnant. I’m not so sure.)<\/p>\n

The Palin family issued a statement saying the daughter and daddy-to-be, Levi, would marry:<\/p>\n

\n

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. As Bristol faces the responsibilities of adulthood, she knows that she has our unconditional love and support…Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family. We ask the media, respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Naturally this will introduce some German terms–mainly schadenfreude<\/em>, I think–into the political lexicon. But it is also offering “Palinistas” and McCainiacs a chance to tout Palin as even more pro-life than ever. I haven’t surfed too far, but I was struck by the title of Rod Dreher’s “Crunchy Con” post<\/a>: “Palin’s daughter gets pregnant, chooses life.” Rod writes:<\/p>\n

\n

Will this hurt her politically? I’m thinking not. Nor should it. Unplanned teen pregnancy is not unheard of in this country. Any family could face this crisis, even conservative Christian families. I’ve known some myself. The question is: how do you deal with it? Bristol Palin is not going to abort her unborn child. She’s going to keep the baby and marry the father. Good for her. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did<\/em> happen, and now she’s going to do the right thing — the hard<\/em> thing. Again: good.<\/strong> Mother and child — and father — need support. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My initial reaction is that Dreher is right–Palin supporters will rally around her, and will forcefully use any efforts to view this development as a chink in the Palin’s all-American, super-Christian reputation against the critics. And that might work. As Rod says, and as others have noted, this sort of thing happens to families like the Palins all the time. Sarah Palin and her daughter will be raising kids who will grow up together.<\/p>\n

The news is so delicate for the Dems that Obama has weighed in<\/a> saying:<\/p>\n

\n

“Back off these kinds of stories…I have said before and I will repeat again: People’s families are off limits. And people’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor and or her potential perfromance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18 and how a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be a topic of our politics.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yet so nervous is the Christian right that they’re actually giving Obama kudos–Rod calls him “classy,” even though Obama’s demonstrated class throughout the campaign, as opposed to the other camp. Then again, Obama is also in a political bind, as the GOP was saying his camp started the rumors that led to the revelation. He denied it, and wanted to put distance there, if possible.<\/p>\n

I am not running for office, thank heaven, so at the risk of incurring such wrath (but what the heck), I think this story raises raises many other truly serious questions, beyond the obvious hole in the Palins’ holier-than-thou presentation. For one, the McCain camp apparently knew of Bristol’s pregnancy before the pick was made. So why wasn’t this made public right off the bat? Why all the hype about how wonderful the family is–when you know that may blow up in your face? According to campaign officials, the announcement was made after wild rumors began circulating on liberal blogs (not here!) that intended to counter rumors by liberal bloggers that Gov. Palin only claimed to have given birth last April, but the child (Trig, who has Down syndrome) was really Bristol’s. So how long were they going to keep this secret? For another, say, two months–until Nov. 5?<\/p>\n

The Palins are of course also fortunate to have the means to support their pregant teenage daughter–what will she do as vice-president and potential president do ensure other young single moms have the same option? And how will she address her party’s ad nauseam<\/em> rhetoric about the decline in morals and family values when the very things they blast in the rest of society are in fact happening at home?<\/p>\n

But again, I doubt that will have traction. Indeed, it may not even be true in a few hours, in light of the news here<\/a> that in the hours before her selection was announced a McCain campaign volunteer was surreptiously massaging Palin’s Wikipedia entry<\/a> with more than 30 edits to make her look good. (Lecture for the first day of class this semester writes itself…)<\/p>\n

More perilous for Palin (the candidate, not the daughter), I think, are some of the items that blogmeisters at dotCommonweal<\/a> brought to light, namely, that she actually backed that infamous pork barrel “Bridge to Nowhere” when she ran for governor in 2006, even though she said at her introduction by McCain that she was against it–and McCain cited that as a reason for picking her, so she could clean up Washington. As the USA Today story<\/a> says:<\/p>\n

\n

Asked why she supported the bridge, Palin’s communications director Bill McAlister said, “It was never at the top of her priority list, and in fact the project isn’t necessarily dead … there’s still the potential for improved ferry service or even a bridge of a less costly design.” She changed her mind, he said, when “she saw that Alaska was being perceived as taking from the country and not giving, and that impression bothered her and she wants to change it…I think that Sarah Palin is someone who has the courage to reevaluate situations as they developed.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She is good at reevaluation. A dotCommonwealer also dug up her response to a 2006 Eagle Forum election questionnaire:<\/p>\n

\n

QUESTION: Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?<\/p>\n

PALIN: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, as even Wikipedia knows<\/a>, the pledge wasn’t written until 1892, and the phrase “Under God” wasn’t added until the 1950s–at the behest of the Knights of Columbus, natch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had thought the terrifying onslaught of Gustav and the efforts by the GOP to dodge the Katrina bullet–or turn it to McCain’s benefit–would be the story of the day, but the bombshell news that Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter Bristol is five months pregnant is worth addressing given the stakes, and the nexus of religion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,12,32,1,13,51,9],"tags":[93,92,89,6,90,91,83],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-catholics","category-christians","category-election-08","category-evangelicals","category-media","category-religion-in-the-public-square","tag-wikipedia","tag-bridge-to-nowhere","tag-bristol-palin","tag-mccain","tag-pregnant-teenagers","tag-pro-life","tag-sarah-palin"],"yoast_head":"\n"Palin's pregnant!" 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}