Parading the Baby - Sarah Palin @ Republican Convention

Did I just see Cindy holding Trig? I mean: can we have it one way or the other? Either the family is out of bounds or it is in the spotlight. Brandishing a Down Syndrome child as a campaign statement is daring the press to ask questions about him. And if you are going to hold the baby in front of the cameras, how can you say that the details of his birth cannot even be discussed?
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/parading-the-ba....
Hours ahead of Sarah Palin's big speech at the RNC, the Palin family met the McCain family as they arrived at the airport. Visible in the live shots on MSNBC taken at the airport appear to be two new campaign faces: Palin's older son Track, who is in the Army and is likely the gentleman with close-cropped hair, and daughter Bristol's boyfriend Levi Johnston, with whom she expects a child later this year. The pair were holding hands on the tarmac.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/03/levi-johnston-and-track-p_n_123559.html
They took center stage with the full knowledge that their 17-year-old's five-months-along pregnancy was about to become front page news around the world. Bristol Palin hasn't been the star of a major kids TV show like Jamie Lynn or Miley Cyrus. She has not chosen a life of celebrity. But now, thanks to her mother's decision to accept the Republican Vice Presidential candidacy, her private life — her sex life — is as exposed as if she had long been a cover regular on Star or US Weekly.

She has unwittingly and literally become the poster child for her mother's anti-choice and abstinence-only education policies. But Bristol Palin isn't a policy poster child, or a celebrity, she's a real live 17-year-old trying to cover her growing bump with a baggy sweatshirt or by holding her 4 month-old baby brother as a shield. She's now planning, according to her mom's statement, to marry and spend her life with her 18-year-old boyfriend, Levi Johnston, a guy who uses the "f" word as his major descriptive adjective on his MySpace page. He also until yesterday described himself as someone who "likes to hang out with the boys...and just f---in chillin," and who doesn't want kids on that same page, until it was yanked off of public view.

What kind of parents today — this is 2008 — want to doom their daughter to a "shotgun" marriage with a guy who doesn't want kids? It's going to be tough enough for Bristol to finish high school, let alone go on to college and realize any ambitions of her own, without being trapped in a marriage that neither young person is probably ready for. And if self-described "redneck" Levi isn't happy about being pushed into parenthood and marriage, you can "f---in" expect he'll make sure that Bristol knows about it.

Like most teenage girls she is probably insecure and is blaming herself for her own predicament.

Blaming herself for not being abstinent and instead being one of the 60% of American high school seniors who are sexually active. Blaming herself for getting pregnant like 3 out of 10 American teen girls do each year. And now blaming herself for possibly derailing her mother's vice-presidential ambitions because of that pregnancy. There's no way that she's not going to do what her parents want, in order to bolster her mother's image, even if that means supporting her mother's platform and getting married at 17.

And just imagine if John McCain and Sarah Palin are elected to two terms in office. Bristol's every move as a teen mom will be under scrutiny — Britney-style. Her marriage to Levi Johnston, will HAVE TO WORK or her parents' image will be tarnished. Talk about pressure, Bristol.

Sarah Palin also needs to ponder this: if she succeeds in "normalizing" her daughter's pregnancy, making it almost seem sort of glamorous, will other teen girls look at this and say what is the problem with having a baby? asks Sarah Brown, the CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancies.

In that case, Palin's exploitation of her daughter hasn't just hurt Bristol's own young life, she'll hurt countless others.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bonnie-fuller/sarah-palin-she-has-chose_b_12328...

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Sarah
• Palin
• Barack
• Obama
• abortion
• pro
• choice
• life
• john
• Mccain
• Bristol
• pregnant
• Trig
• down
• syndrome
• republican
• convention

[fiammeaudace]

I don't like how she parades her baby around. Stop making it such a spectical. Plenty of mothers have children with Downs and I'm sure they don't appreciate her using her baby as a campaign technique.

[postlapsaria87]

It's the Republicans who keep using them as a tool. If they don't like the criticism, then they shouldn't parade them around.

[Raini411]

@BeenBroughin they proabably drug him so he can forget where he comes from

[PleaseGimmeAName]

I guess all the enlightened progressives would rather we lock special needs kids in closets or down in the basement. Oh yeah, that's right, you'd just rather kill them in the womb. For liberals, seeing families with the inner strength and love to take care of kids like Trig is the real inconvenient truth.

[loonmaniac]

@Spectatio Down's babies have bad immune systems. Slinging that kid around in public is not only stupid, it's immoral.

[xtrontruth]

How does one work up that much rabid hate?

Probably reading your insane ramblings you Conservative Lunatic. Republicans put party before country. Kool-aid Drinker.

[Spectatio]

notice

LIBERALS want to kill handicapped people.....they just can't get Hitler out of their thinking. Hitler felt the same as liberals and they are consumed with him.

the sonsofbitches want Hitler back.

ANY liberal would love to man the ovens,

they are blood thirsty assholes. any liberal i know whould have an orgasm torturing the handicapped....they are haters and killer wannabes. how does one work up that much rabid hate.

[jethromayham]

WTF? Downs Syndrome is a no, no? To be politically correct, we supposed to say Challenged Kid? What is wrong with just the word 'retard'? I heard it used for years and years.

Example: Cook pours water into boiling oil by mistake. The fire department says the guy is just a retard because the oil exploded on his face.

[loonmaniac]

She lugs that kid around like it's a 5 pound sack of flour.

[FreeLovePower]

fuck abstinence go free love!

[sarahPluvsabortions]

How about HAVING the special needs child, then actually taking care of the SPECIAL NEEDS child, they are called SPECIAL NEEDS children because they have SPECIAL NEEDS. These needs DO NOT include hours under hot lights w/ flashbulbs going off by the hundreds, being bussed & send on airplanes at all hours of the day/night. Being without your mother for hours/days at a time so she can further her own political career.