You know, I can make a personal decision not to talk about the fact that Gov. Sarah Palin’s 17-year old daughter, Bristol Palin, is five-months pregnant. I have no desire to exploit or criticize a 17-year old girl. But it doesn’t matter what decision I make. The Palins made the decision to turn this into a campaign issue when they accepted the nomination. The McCain campaign says that they knew about this and were okay with it. They are blaming left-wing blogs for forcing them to make this disclosure through our rumor-mongering about Sarah Palin’s spring pregnancy. Do they expect us to believe that they could have avoided disclosing that Bristol Palin was pregnant if only a few diarists had not been spreading around conspiracy theories?
Let me disclose something. Bloggers and progressive activists talk to each other and strategize together. We didn’t want to touch the Sarah Palin pregnancy story with a 10-foot pole and the overwhelming consensus was to strongly discourage anyone that was running with the rumors. These rumors were started in the spring by Republicans in Alaska and not by the progressive blogosphere. We stifled the story as much as we could without deleting people’s diaries.
Even now, go over to Atrios and you’ll see him asking the media to back off of the story about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy and to please respect her privacy. That’s our first instinct because we have progressive values. People’s sex lives should be private. We know of gay Republicans whose privacy we respect because they do not engage in hypocrisy and vote against gay rights. The child of a politician, especially a minor, is off limits, even when all can see the natural consequences of opposing contraception and promoting abstinence-only education. Some of us won’t be able to resist pointing out that hypocrisy. But I hope we will all do our best to give Bristol Palin her privacy and her dignity.
What this revelation does is make me angry. I’m angry that John McCain did not vet his running mate. I’m angry that Sarah Palin didn’t put her daughter first and decline the invitation to run for higher office. I’m angry that a 17-year old girl has been interjected into our national conversation over who would make a better team to run our country. I’m angry that the Republicans are trying to blame this revelation on left-wing bloggers who went out of their way to be respectful and live up to our own values.
This is tabloid politics. This is not serious politics. And it pisses me off.
