Bristol had been suspiciously kept out of school for 5 months prior to the birth with "mono," and Sarah Palin was allegedly leaking amniotic fluid before boarding the 8 hour flight back to Alaska, where upon landing instead of rushing to the closest major hospital she ambled along to some tiny town an hour away to give birth in total seclusion. Nobody on her staff knew she was pregnant and the flight attendants claimed they hadn't the faintest idea there was a pregnant woman on the flight.
This is fantastic people- top notch Republican shenanigans right out of the gate- they'd have to find an Obama-run cigarette sweatshop which enslaves privileged white babies to top it.
But now I find out that 17 year old Bristol Palin actually is pregnant!
Either she's gotten knocked up once before and both babies are hers, or her mother is a reckless nut who gladly boards crosscountry flights while in labor with a down-syndrome fetus. Either way, McCain's new VP who is pro abstinence-only sex ed and pro-life even in rape and incest scenarios has an unwed pregnant 17 year old daughter.
Are the Republicans kidding? Part of me is giddy that McCain has dug his own grave with this nomination, but another part is gravely suspicious. I mean maybe they're just fucking with us- like the time they nominated an illiterate draft-dodging cokehead to office because they knew they could rig the election and win. Or the time they did that again.
Bear with me while I explain that I just came back from my cousin's wedding in Florida, complete with cheek-pinching relatives and floofy dresses and that guy who is incapable of comprehending the meaning of personal space.
And here is what I realized- everyone love gossip. I heard about overbearing mothers and selfish brothers and alcoholic sisters and manic-depressive gun-toting uncles. I heard about the best friend who's in love with the roommate's girlfriend, and I even heard about the cousin who was a big mouthed troublemaking yank and realized after a while that my gossip buddy was unknowingly referring to... me.
My grandmother says that 'lashon hara' (evil tongue) is, in the torah, one of the worst things a person can do aside from breaking one of the big 10. That is, of course, unless speaking the truth will prevent future harm.
So technically if I want to get into heaven, saying that Sarah Palin is a hypocritical bitch will not win me points with the big guy unless being a hypocrite will endanger the country. And maybe it will. But we do have a long illustrious line of hypocrites- Jefferson, author of the declaration of independence, not only owned slaves, but had illegitimate slave children! Fucking A! Why didn't they tell us that in school?
Well, probably because being a hypocritical bastard did not diminish enough from his positive accomplishments to warrant a juicy footnote. So as much as I hate to say it, and as great of a story as preggers-Bristol is, we can't write off Palin just for saying one thing and (her daughter) doing another. Without a condom. Again.
There are plenty of thing about all of us that are beyond humiliating and which, if plastered all over the tabloids, could be used to make us look like total psychopaths. In most every case, people are not divisible in a Good/Bad binary, and as much as I'd like this scandal to take down Palin and the Republicans in a fireball of elitist racist homophobic ignorance, I think that buying into the gossip instead of the real issues is eventually going to hurt everyone involved.
The media has become so obsessed with gossip that honest discussion about experience and ideas is completely irrelevant if one of the candidates happens to not be donning an American Flag pin. And God help him if his middle name is Hussein. Even though the rumormills are favoring the Dems at the moment, mudslinging always goes two ways, and if we ever want to have an adult democracy it is incumbent upon our generation to demand relevance instead of spectacle.
So, this is a long way of explaining Hannah's Guide to Eternal Happiness (Part 2):
2. Gossip is bullshit.
It hurts when it's about you, and it hurts you even when it's not.
More to come. Keep me posted.
xo
H
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt
Posts
haaahahahahha toooo funny -- "and I even heard about the cousin who was a big mouthed troublemaking yank and realized after a while that my gossip buddy was unknowingly referring to... me."
ReplyDeleteyep, i also foresee months of gossiping overshadowing obama excitement... if mccain was accusing obama of being a paris-hilton-esque celebrity before, look who's talking now.
First of all, I don't think we can rule out the possibility that Bristol Palin was just trying to keep warm by engaging in one of Alaska's two leading (read: only) forms of recreational activity: ice sports and sheet sports.
ReplyDeleteThis whole news cycle amounts to nothing more than slapstick humor from a self-described hockey mom. (And I thought we wanted our politicians to be goal-oriented... since when did scoring become a bad thing?)
That Sarah Palin is as prolific as she is pro-life seems fitting but serves only to underscore the point that, to a large extent, a candidate's personal life is irrelevant to his or her candidacy. Those features of the campaign that tend to fascinate the most (e.g., whether the candidate's parents bestowed him with an unfortunate moniker, or whether the candidate happens to be wearing an American flag pin) should matter least.
I don't care whether a president gets off on screwing interns, invalids, or Indian short-haired goats, so long as everyone involved is a consenting adult and said activities don't interfere with his or her ability to run the country. Last I checked, that was the point of the job. That the office is highly visible does not automatically endow its occupant with any special qualities of moral leadership. We could elect moral leaders to the presidency instead, but I don't really want to see the Dalai Lama behind the Resolute desk anytime soon. The positions of political leader and moral leader are inherently different and thus require inherently different qualifications; they cannot and should not be conflated with each other. Experience in missionary positions is ONLY relevant to the latter.
In the end, the whole thing comes down to choice. Sarah Palin chose to invest much of her time in her political career rather than spending it with her family. That was her choice, and it is hers to live with. Had she chosen to stay at home, perhaps we would be more approving of her morals, but would we still want her to take up residence on Observatory Circle?
And, as an aside, since when did American citizens know the first thing about morality, anyway?
I do not believe that Bristol Palin's extracurricular activities should matter one iota to her mother's candidacy. The appropriate response to questions on this score is simple: fuck off.
Amazing... another brilliant post in a brilliant blog, Hannah. Keep up the terrific work.
ReplyDelete"new retarded baby?" oh, that's nice.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/09/02/bristol-palin-stars-in-juneau/
ReplyDeleteMaybe you meant new, retarded baby as in "fresh, ignorance-is-bliss" sort of way?
ReplyDeleteTotally...
ReplyDelete