US Weekly runs scandalous Sarah Palin story, future son-in-law to attend RNC

The father of Bristol Palin’s unborn baby, Levi Johnston, 18, will attend the Republican National Convention in Minnesota to celebrate his future mother-in-law’s Vice Presidential nomination. That makes sense, because he’s about to join the family and Palin needs to show wary voters that her daughter made a mistake but that she and the father are accepting responsibility and doing their best. Sarah Palin insists that her daughter and the baby’s father were engaged before they learned of 17 year-old Bristol’s pregnancy.

While some say Sarah Palin is somehow at fault for not giving her daughter birth control advice and insisting on abstinence others hold up their hands and say that 17 year-old teenagers get up to all sorts of things and the best you can do is be there for them and help them live with their decisions, which Sarah Palin is doing. This whole incident makes Sarah Palin seem human by some people’s estimation.

Amidst all this controversy over her pregnant teen daughter, outlets are questioning Palin’s fitness for the job and arguing that we should be talking about that, not about her daughter. Her record and where she stands on the issues should be the focus.

US Weekly brings it down to a character issue and points out that Sarah Palin was less than courteous to the president of the Alaskan Senate, laughing along with a radio DJ who made fun of the woman, a cancer survivor, by calling her a “cancer” and “a bitch” and mocking her size. When it came time to apologize Sarah Palin did it half-heartedly, doing one of those “I’m sorry if you misinterpreted” type responses:

On January 15, Alaska governor Sarah Palin laughed along with an Alaskan shock-jock DJ who called her political rival Lyda Green a “cancer,” a “bitch” and ridiculed her weight. (Green is a cancer survivor.)

“People were so nice and were motified. Newspapers that were never Lyda Green-friendly, they demanded that [Sarah] apologize,” Green told Us.

“You know what she said? She said, ‘I’m calling to apologize. I hope you didn’t misunderstand the radio program,’” Green says. “I told her, ‘I didn’t misunderstand.’”

The Alaska state senator added, “It’s not a good way to behave. Why would anybody call a shock jock?”

So what did Green think when she heard Palin was John McCain’s vice presidential candidate? “It’s been very difficult to work with her,” she tells Us Weekly. “I wish there had been more vetting.”

Monday, Palin released a statement confirming that her daughter Bristol, 17, was five-months pregnant.

Mom-of-five Palin is antiabortion (even in cases of rape) and opposed to sex-education classes (she believes in abstinence instruction for teens).

In the wake of the announcement about Bristol, questions have begun to arise about the governor’s candor and McCain’s judgment (The New York Times reported that McCain’s camp vetted Palin only the day before her selection was announced.

“It’s conceivable a 17-year-old girl just screwed the GOP,” Democratic strategist George Lakoff tells Us Weekly.

Though hailed by many family-values supporters for standing by her daughter during her difficult time, Barbara Belknap, former president of the National Organization of Women’s Juneau chapter, is less glowing: “Here’s a textbook case of how abstinence - only doesn’t work in practice, even if your mom’s the governor.”

[From US Weekly]

It’s pretty clear where US Weekly’s allegiances are, and we can’t blame them. Most of us here are Obama supporters, and while we wouldn’t go about discrediting Palin in quite the same way we did run that ridiculous conspiracy theory story about Trig being Bristol’s son. Sometimes it’s hard to pass up such incredible gossip, even if it defies logic. Whether it’s helpful to Obama or not to go after Palin is another story, but the other side has been doing it for quite a while and it seemed to be wholly effective against Senator Kerry four years ago.

I don’t like it when people bash policies or programs by saying they failed one high-profile person so they must be ineffective. That’s logically a very weak argument and a sample of one. We have plenty of other better statistical evidence that abstinence education doesn’t work, we don’t need to hold up this poor girl as an example.

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