You Wimp MF’in Liberal Bloggers
No one “bully and shamed 17 year old Bristol Palin”. When her mother decided to accept the offer of Vice President of the United States from her Republican presidential nominee, everything became fair game. If her mother wasn’t prepared for this, then she should have turned down the McCain campaign’s offer.
YES, IT DOES FUCKING MATTER.
I don’t know how more strongly that I can posit that Bristol Palin’s unexpected, teen pregnancy DOES FUCKING MATTER. And it’s a very relevant point for discussion.
Now, I know that I won’t get linked by the usual suspects (or even news feeds) with this post. But I don’t care at this point.
Here’s an example of what I’m hearing from “liberal” bloggers on the topic.
From Tennessee Guerrilla Women:
Well, kudos to the sexist vampires over at Daily Kos. Thanks to their unwavering efforts to bully and shame and humiliate 17 year old Bristol Palin and her family, Sarah Palin was forced to announce that Bristol is pregnant.
Bull fucking shit. No one “bully and shamed 17 year old Bristol Palin”. When her mother decided to accept the offer of Vice President of the United States from her Republican presidential nominee, everything became fair game. If her mother wasn’t prepared for this, then she should have turned down the McCain campaign’s offer.
I’m tired of apologies. I’m tired of Dem operatives in the Obama campaign saying this is off limits. IT’S NOT. The daughter of a fringe right wing, fundamentalist end-timer lunatic, who is now running for Vice President of the United States of America, has violated every precept of the fringe fundamentalists. But it doesn’t seem to matter, in the eyes of the legacy media, or even much of the liberal blogosphere.
BULLSHIT.
The kid is pregnant. Out of wedlock. Underage. Engaging in carnal sin. And her mother and the GOP campaign operatives tried their damnedest to keep this under wraps.
Fuck ‘em. It’s out there. If this causes the Palin family pain, I don’t give a shit. Really.
Sarah Palin is an end-timer. Her personal beliefs could cause a whole lot of people a whole lot of pain, were she to be in a position to bring the tenets of her religion to fruition. Armageddonists like Palin scare the crap out of me. So, no, I don’t give a shit if I cause the Palin family a little extra heartburn this evening by coming down on their daughter.
Fuck ‘em. But I’ll give Gov. Palin this - may her grandchild not be a spawn from hell. And may the Gov retreat to Wasilla when this has all become too much; where her and her beliefs belong (and where her grandchild deserves to be raised), and where she can’t hurt anyone, other than her own family.
In the scheme of things, this isn’t going to matter much to anyone outside of the more loopy “fire & brimstone” evangelicals. There’s strong reason to doubt those folks were going to move in McCain’s direction anyway. The mainstream media is completely ignoring the “cast your write-in vote for Jesus movement” that’s going on in many of these churches (bet ya didn’t know about it either, dad), but they might after it Naderizes Johnny Boy in a few southern states come November. Naw, a far more relevant tidbit is that Mrs. Palin was formerly a member of the Alaskan Independance Party, which advocates for Alaska to secede from the Union. So, you belive your state should break away from the United States, and yet you want to be second-in-line to run it? How interesting…
I applaud you for standing behind your convictions and I agree with you wholeheartedly. Gov. Palin should have known exactly what was in store for her and her family, John McCain started the attack on candidates families with his Chelsea Clinton joke. The Democrats need to step up and attack, attack, attack just like the GOP does and they need to stop apologizing for everything. Take a page out of the GOP handbook SAY IT AND STAND BEHIND IT, you don’t see the GOP apologize for anything even if they are caught red-handed.
Richard Blair:
Thanks for your profane, hateful and ugly comments. I am a senior citizen (R-MO), and guess what, pro choice, and I am delighted that the choice for the Palin family was available per the law. Yes, its true, and the family had a choice and they chose life. So what’s your big problem with that? Perhaps you should think about this a bit more deeply.
Maybe think that life is precious, choice is precious, freedom is precious. Hate speech is even accepted if not precious.
Mr. Proctor:
You are very correct. And that’s the subject of a future post. Bristol Palin had a choice. She apparently chose to keep the baby. And that’s her choice. And that’s the point.
Choice. Not because it’s politically convenient for the family, but because she wants the baby, against all odds that a shotgun marriage (to legitimize the child) will be successful (it won’t). Or that she’ll be a “good mother” (statistics are clear that 17 year old mothers make lousy mothers).
If the media stories are to be believed, Bristol made a choice on her own. That’s fine. Every 17 year old caught up in her condition should be able to make the choice to keep her child. Or not.
And that’s the point.
I agree.God damn pearl clutching Dems ! Stick the shiv in and twist it ! I’m so pissed I can’t typeARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
To further Richard’s point from my perspective, I see nothing here but hypocrisy and when it started being reported yesterday in the news that this is a personal family matter and it shouldn’t be touched by media, bloggers, etc, that’s when the hypocrisy alert when on full display and here’s why.
First off, nobody is attacking Bristol Palin, but they are attacking the merits of the Palin family/McCain camp argument that it’s off limits to discussion. It’s great that Palin chose to keep her baby. Good luck to her with that decision and I hope her family really does support her because she’s going to need a lot of support. She had a choice to make and fortunately, she was afforded that choice.
However, her mother is on record for as not supporting (rear: respecting the choice to seek abortion) not even in the case of rape of her own daughter so what if her daughter had “chosen” to abort her daughter? Would she still have the love and support of her family?
Wait, let’s go just one more step and you’ll understand why this whole story bothers me.
Fortunately, Bristol Palin does have the support of her family to make the decision to keep a child at 17 and out of wedlock (another big hypocritical point, if someone wants to raise it). Unfortunately, there are millions of women who don’t have that type of support and for them, they have (or should have) the choice (as did Bristol, apparently) to make whatever decision is best for them and it should be a completely private matter and only discussed between the woman, the father if available, and the doctor. Friends and family for guidance, but ultimately that’s the pregnant mother’s decision.
So why is Bristol’s decision a private matter not to be discussed while her mother is for abstinence only education, against sexual education, and makes that a public matter of her platform that affects millions of women countrywide?
Aren’t the decisions of millions of other women also a private matter that shouldn’t be open to attack?
No, instead, they’re labeled baby-killers, sinners, hateful, they’re falsely identified as being pro-abortion when they are pro-choice, they have to suffer from protestors outside clinics, they risk not being able to get their birth control filled at a pharmacy where a religious zealot works despite the fact that BC is often prescribed for purposes aside from actual birth control, the same availability problem goes with Plan B, etc.
No, I’m glad this came out. Hopefully the media will have the balls to go after the hypocrisy of the entire situation because it is so thick right now it makes me literally ill and sick to my stomach knowing they might get away with shuffling it, yet again, under the media rug by crying “No! No! Don’t talk about our daughter! Our daughter is off limits! We can’t talk about this and if you do, you’re an evil, evil person!”
What’s next? Gov. Palin gets a sharp line of questioning from a reporter on the hypocrisy of this or how it raises the issue of unwed teenage pregnancy and she dodges by saying that her daughter is off-limits?
Is this going to be Palin’s “Noun, Verb, POW?” moment?
Fucking unbelievable.
Crainiun,
Do you really believe, as you say, that “everything became fair game?” You believe that’s fair about any candidate’s children and that privacy should not exist for the children of politicians? Please think carefully about that.
Do you really believe, as you say, that “everything became fair game?”
In this instance, yes. Ask yourself: what would the GOP (and right wing bloggers and the legacy media) be doing and saying if Palin was Obama’s running mate? What would have they been saying from the moment she was introduced as a Veep candidate? You’re a smart man, John. You know the answer.
Sarah Palin would have been removed from the ticket already if she was a Dem.
Ugly words, Richard. Palin’s positions on sex ed, abstinence education, and funding Planned Parenthood are in-bounds and debatable. The independance decisions of her near adult child are not.
What I’m took from your post is that since Palin is from the far-right and has conversative religious views that she is somehow less than human and that it is acceptable to demonize.
I’m a Republican, I’m not in love with this VEEP pick.
And I think your post is contributes to the toxic atmosphere in which we do politics.
Disappointed,
Larry Shallenberger
remember all u liberals attacking a 17 yr old girl for being pregnant your messiah’s mother was a 18 yr old whore who gave birth to a bastard
John F - the comment immediately above is exactly what I’m talking about.
Larry S - why am I required to “play nice” when, as I said above, the GOP and right wing bloggers would be absolutely shredding a Dem veep candidate in similar circumstances? You’re right. Extreme posts like mine (which I rarely engage in) contribute to the toxic atmosphere in politics.
I am sympathetic to Bristol Palin’s circumstances. I am not sympathetic to her mother’s fringe lunatic beliefs that may have contributed to Bristol’s circumstances, and where those two situations intersect, it’s very relevant.
Richard, you are more than correct that the pregnancy matters. However, it only matters to the core base of the GOP. And already there is more than enough grumbling from that very base. What reason is there for us to beat the drum? One, the conservative base probably will dismiss any such talk from us, even if the secretly agree. Two, their media infrastructure is more than willing to start talking about the pregnancy. They already have. Just check out Sally Quinn.
I understand you want to cry to the heavens about the hypocrisy of the GOP and of Palin as VP. But you are preaching to the choir here. And there is something to be said for the process of osmosis. That is, trust me when I say there is more than enough whispering going on in churches across the country.
Lew ’s comment above further proves the point I made earlier about some of the labels that other, less fortunate mother’s receive when they choose to keep a baby.
Whore.
You stay classy, lew.
Thhis has nothing to do with Bristol and everything to do with Palin’s stances on the issues and her ability to be a mother. If you are running on the idea that you are a “Family Values” candidate, and you are a fire-and-brimstone ultra-right-winger, don’t turn around and tell us that it doesn’t matter when your teenage daughter gets knocked up. If, hypothetically, it were Condi’s or Olympia Snowe’s daughter (I said hypothetical), then I might be a little more forgiving, because they aren’t far-righters.
Palin brought this on herself by accepting the nomination. Her daughter isn’t the issue. Her parenting and worldview are.
Richard,
I would hope you would play nice because you possessed a moral compass that wasn’t controlled by the political room temperature.
While I differ with some of Barack’s views, I respect his disciplined civility.
Larry, I’m generally very “temperature controlled”, disciplined and civil. I don’t drop F-bombs online very often, and when I do, it’s usually in a very controlled (and tactical) manner. But when this situation was blamed by the GOP yesterday on “liberal bloggers”, and many in the media (and blogosphere) were saying that the topic was out of bounds, it touched a really hot button for me (particularly with most liberal bloggers ignoring the initial rumors).
God knows I’m not squeaky clean. But when someone is chosen for a VP position based solely on her appeal to a certain demographic (in this case, a fringe fundamentalist base), issues such as this one become fair game.
I’ll reiterate that the whole situation is extremely relevant, given Sarah Palin’s personal viewpoints. By accepting the VP nomination, she chose to expose Bristol (and the entire Palin family) to scrutiny.
On Friday, I wrote (somewhere else, I think) a comment comparing Gov. Palin to a baseball team manager from the rookie leagues being called up to manage the New York Yankees, and opining that she had no idea of the media storm that was heading her way. Trust me, this isn’t nearly as bad as it’s going to get in the next couple of months. She’s in the big leagues now, and she brought her entire family to the game, whether she wanted to or not.
Good to see you here, Larry. We need to get in touch sometime.
No, Bristol Palin’s decision should not be the focus here. Sure, Sarah Palin’s positions can be, but it is my view that McCain’s rash judgements are where we should focus our discussions. I’ll get to that in a few moments.
Bristol Palin’s decision isn’t the focus, Steven. I wish her well during what will be a very difficult time for her. Sarah Palin’s viewpoints, and her decision that led to her daughter being in the spotlight, are the focus (and should be).
lol. Tell us how you REALLY feel, eh?
Oh, Daddy Dobson has already spun this for the far right.
Does it matter? sure. Is it fair game? I guess. Shoulod we go at it hard? Prolly not.
What’s to say, it happened, they are dealing with it. Bigger issue? Who vetted this woman? Why was she chosen over lots of qualified people? Who takes that position with a 5 month old baby?
of course it matters.
It matters because Sarah Palin and her ilk would deny men and women the same opportunity to choose that her daughter has. And since, per Peggy Noonan, it would be irresponsible NOT to speculate, how much you wanna bet Sarah the Fundie sat her daughter down and said something along the lines of “you’ve already embarrassed me once by getting knocked up. You are NOT going to make it worse by aborting that baby. You WILL carry it to term, you WILL marry Wrangler or Levis or whatever that boy is called, or so help me god you’ll be sleeping in a box in Juneau.” You think that kid WANTS to get married at 17? To someone who describes himself as“a fucking redneck” who “doesn’t want kids”?
It matters because, as Richard says, the GOP would be merciless (and has been) if it was a Democrat’s kid. There’s no question: they’ve already done it with the chelsea clinton attacks from the 1990s, while demanding (and getting) special dispensation for the Bush twins. So by all means, bring up Sarah Palin’s fitness as a mom. How could she allow this to happen? How could she not know her daughter was having sex? Isn’t that a primary responsibility when you’re the parent of teenagers? My parents sat every single one of us, including sis, down at age 13, reviewed the basic biology, handed us condoms, and made us promise to use them.
You can’t go around passing legislation that seeks to deny people reproductive choice and sex ed, and then say it doesn’t matter when your own kid winds up preggers.
It’s not about the daughter, but it IS about Sarah Palin.
Ahhh.. I understand now.
It’s ok for Republicans to attack an 11 year old boy, or a 50 some odd year old actor’s illness because they support Democratic causes.
And it’s ok to attack Obama for exercising his first amendment rights to NOT wear a stupid made in china flag pin.
and it’s ok to attack his wife as “Obama’s Baby Momma”
It’s ok to demean the qualifications of a man who’s spent his time serving his state and his nation for years.
It’s ok to wonder if Obama’s too black or too white.
But questioning a woman who’s qualifications include being in possession of a Vagina for 40 years and having 5 kids from said vagina is out of the question?
Sorry Republicans, you set the rules of engagement. Now you have to deal with it. So suck it up and quit your fucking crying.
And I know you won’t be able to understand this, because your ideology gets in the way but, what we’re objecting to isn’t the fact that Ms. Congeniality’s daughter is 5 months pregnant and not married. We’re objecting to the fact of this woman’s motherhood is being held up as some sort of job qualification, when by her very own standards and the standards set by her right wing worshipers: She has FAILED as a mother because her daughter had premarital sex and is pregnant ( not to mention the fact that Palin wants abstinence only education which obviously didn’t work even in her own daughter’s case) .
She would project the same bullshit failed morality onto her daughter that she would project onto MY daughter even when it very obviously DOES NOT WORK. She can’t even keep her own house in order, why the hell should she have the slightest say about what goes on in mine? That’s the problem that we have with the entirety of your neo-con movement. Go live your own damned life and let me live mine and we’ll be fine. You don’t like abortions? Don’t fucking have one. You don’t like gay marriage? Don’t fucking marry a gay person. But you DO NOT have the right to stick your nose into my house and meddle in my affairs.
So stick Palin up your ass next to Rove, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and the rest of the traitors you put in office and SPIN on it.
Oh.. and to you fetus fetishists out there. If you really gave a damn about children you’d start trying to make their lives better while they are here instead of trying to redefine reality to the way you’d like it to be. Just ask Deamonte Driver how much your movement gave a damn about him. Or at least you could have before he died at age 12 because his mother couldn’t afford a $80 Dentist visit. Truth be told you don’t give a rats ass about children. You care about power, money, control and forcing your twisted ideology on other people. If you did care about kids, SCHIP would have been passed long ago and Deamonte and other children like him would still be alive.
#
remember all u liberals attacking a 17 yr old girl for being pregnant your messiah’s mother was a 18 yr old whore who gave birth to a bastard
Comment by lew — September 2, 2008 @ 8:49 am
and you obviously have no problem at all pointing that out, so why the hell should we?
Both Sara Palin’s and McCain’s judgement are the issue… McCain has shown EXTREMELY POOR judgement in picking someone who’s ONLY attribute is to appease the extreme right on the issue of abortion… He shows an extreme lack of judgement with her as his pick because she’s grossly underqualified, embroiled in several scandals and is likely to be impeached as governor BY HER OWN PARTY. It shows extreme lack of judgement because she obviously WASN’T VETTED prior to his announcemnet. And it shows an EXTREME DISRESPECT for women and all voters because HER views are so extremely to the right of most Americans and McCain thought he could pass her off as a Hillary substitute because she has tits and a vagina.
Ms. Palin’s extreme lack of judgement (or it could be blind personal ambition) is shown in her acceptance of the offer KNOWING FULL WELL that it would put her whole life and her family (especially Bridget) in the spotlight… Even with out Bridget being / or having been pregnant, Sarah has enough skeletons in her own closet that should have made her say “Thanks, but No Thanks” to McCain’s offer…
Craniun,
You say that “Sarah Palin would have been removed from the ticket already if she was a Dem.”
I disagree.
Joe Biden was not removed from his ticket even though he referred to Obama as “clean” and implied that 7-11 workers all had Indian accents. And you’re a smart man, too, Cranium — you know that won’t be his last gaffe or plagiarism.
Bottom Line: McCain probably did exercise rushed judgment in selecting Palin. She certainly is not the best choice he could have made. He certainly chose her based upon the opinions of his team, who most likely felt they needed a solid pro-life candidate to shore up social conservatives. Certainly, Tom Ridge or Joe Lieberman would have been more reasonable choices, but they are pro-choice.
Another Bottom Line: Obama probably did exercise cloudy judgment in selecting Biden, who, while having outstanding foreign relations background, is the ultimate Washington insider who represents almost the opposite of Obama’s “change” message. Biden represents the status quo and was Obama’s sharpest opponent in the Democratic primary.
But getting back to the point. Your posting shows a side of you that is extremely mean-spirited that I never got from our brief meeting or from all your writings. I’ve always viewed you as a fair and even-keeled opponent with reasonable views. But to say “Fuck ‘em. It’s out there. If this causes the Palin family pain, I don’t give a shit. Really” reveals a caustic, mean-spirited side to you that shocks me. While many politicians on the other side of the aisle have offended me with their views and actions, I’ve never not “give[n] a shit” if an American politician’s family experienced pain.
I’m shocked at your comment, and I hope you will retract it and reconsider how you express your angst. You’re a good man, Cranium, who has strong political opinions. That’s fine. But since you’re a blogger and open to fair-game criticisms yourself as a quasi-public figure, how would you feel if your family was in pain and someone with an opposing viewpoint didn’t “give a shit?”
Surely, you’re not so cruel that you would still holf that offensive stance.
Generally, I agree with egalia (TGW) but I think she’s off the mark here. Apparently, the pregnancy was not a secret in Alaska and they would have had to announce her pregnancy at some time. Additionally, the stories about Sarah Palin covering up the birth of Trig pre-date the post on dKOS (to be honest, I was much more disturbed by the description of Sarah Palin’s behavior on the day of Trig’s delivery than a story of a misguided family’s alleged attempt to cover up a teen-aged daughter’s pregnancy). In all honesty, they should have noted the pregnancy when they introduced the family instead of hiding it behind the body of baby Trig. They make liberal use of Trig, and his Down’s syndrome, as an example of Palin’s adherence to her anti-choice views, they should have done the same with Bristol form the outset or rethought joining the ticket.
I do think that Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston should be off limits (and think it rather unwise for them to be flying Johnston out the the RNC) and that they shouldn’t be attacked. They’re kids - kids who made some poor decisions and are being forced to face the consequences. This being said, Sarah Palin runs on a platform that states that my medical decisions regarding reproduction are not my own private and personal affairs, so asking for this to be considered a private family matter under the circumstances seems a bit rich to me.
While I differ with some of Barack’s views, I respect his disciplined civility.
Comment by Larry Shallenberger — September 2, 2008 @ 11:13 am
Screw civility. For me civility went out the window the 100th time i got called a traitor because I didn’t support our felon President’s invasion of Iraq. When you people pimp slap Malkin, Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage, Beck and the rest then you can ask for civility. When I hear Coulter stand up and seriously appologize for stating that John Walker Lindh needed to be executed in order to intimidate liberals then we’ll talk civility.
Biden might not have been my choice, but he is obviously qualified to hold the position of Vice President. Palin’s qualifications come up lacking in that she really doesn’t have any and any claim to the contrary is pure BS. She’s been the governor of a state with only slightly more population than Fort Worth Texas and she’s been the mayor of a town of 8000 people. Sorry, that doesn’t qualify you to be within one errant heartbeat of the Presidency. It’s almost as though you Republicans think this nation is a joke and are deliberately sabotaging it in order to destroy everything that it stands for.
E in MD,
I apologize on behalf of those who’ve called you a traitor for your political convictions.
I’m not sure what you mean by “you people”, but I have written a book on spirituality and have denounced the whole notion of Christians engaging in cultural wars. Those cast of characters you’ve mentioned are despicable folk and I’m sorry that so many folk on the right allow themselves to be influenced by these shrill hatemongers.
You seem to be making a leap that since I am a Republican that I automatically swallow the whole menu of options that the far right offers.
And the more that I learn about Palin, the more disappointed by the choice. Nowhere in our founding documents is it required that our elections spin on a conservative-liberal axis.
All the best.
Larry
@Steve Reynolds– Hope all is well with you and yours!
Thanks for the sentiment, Larry. Everything is going well except for that loss at Dallas the other night. But I write this while preparing for a really fun class I’m teaching.
If there is any substantive news, you’ll know.