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If you don’t want a media circus the first thing you do is don’t show up at the tent:
Levi Johnston is on his way to join Palins at convention
By RACHEL D’ORO
The Associated PressPublished: September 3rd, 2008 01:50 AM
Last Modified: September 3rd, 2008 02:06 AMWASILLA — The boyfriend of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s unwed, pregnant daughter will join the family of the Republican vice presidential candidate at the GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn.
Levi Johnston’s mother said her 18-year-old son left Alaska Tuesday morning to join the Palin family at the convention where Sen. John McCain will officially receive the Republican nomination for president. The boy’s mother, Sherry Johnston, said there had been no pressure put on her son to marry 17-year-old Bristol Palin and the two teens had made plans to wed before it was known she was pregnant.
“This is just a bonus,” Johnston said…
No, that was not an Onion article. It’s from the Anchorage Daily News.
From Mudflats:
…It took me a while to get my palms off my face so I could check it out, but it’s true. I know we’re not supposed to interfere with the personal lives of candidates’ children. I know that many people, including myself, feel sorry for Bristol and the fact that she was hurled out in front of the nation with nothing to cover her secret expanding midsection except a baby and a giant blanket. I even heard Barack Obama ask us all to drop it. But, inviting the boyfriend to come to the convention in the middle of all this? Who has brought this, and him, right into the most glaring of bright lights, in front of the hugest of audiences? How to create a distracting, embarrassing spectacle with one plane ticket. The mind reels….I think. It’s been reeling since Friday, so it’s hard to tell any more…
I am angered by the way Sarah Palin has used her daughter and now her daughter’s boyfriend. These are teenagers. They may be adults biologically but they are still kids psychologically.
Sarah Palin had a choice when the rumors about Trig (started in Alaska by Republicans) leaked into the mainstream. She had a choice how to deal with it. The most obvious response would have been for her to release her medical records. To make them available for press review the way John McCain did with his medical records to quell rumors about his cancer. In fact, I can’t believe that John McCain didn’t REQUIRE her to do that.
Or she could have given waivers to her doctor and the people in the delivery room to make public statements that they witnessed her giving birth.
Both of those would have been better choices than throwing her daughter to the media. But instead of those two GOOD choices (that of course would have invaded HER privacy) she instead decided to use her daughter’s pregnancy as the proof that Trig was her own child. She diverted attention from her own pregnancy (including her bizarre choice to make a 12 hour flight to Alaska after she started leaking amniotic fluid) and rumors about her daughter by shifting all the attention to her daughter.
Yes, yes I know that her daughter’s pregnancy would have been hard to hide much longer and it was going to come out. But it shouldn’t have come out this way. She used her daughter and it really angers me.
And now she’s going to use this boy.
I am not impressed by this woman.
So, I have been having a field day with the whole GOP VP candidate choice. My friends have all been “How stupid are they?” I can’t type my words for that anti-choice walking environmental nightmare.
Last night my hubby came home and said many of the hourly workers at the plant where he is a manufacturing engineer in St. Louis are totally THRILLED with Sarah Palin. THey love her. They think she is walking her talk by having her daughter have the baby and then she can either mary the boy or give the baby up for adoption. My hubby said it very succinctly – She is a very polarizing candidate.
In fact, once I think about it from the point of view of my family (I was raised evangelical S. Baptist in Texas), this woman is the real deal, i.e. she is a strong, GOD-Fearing (and I do mean fearing) woman. She has multiple children, an obvious sign of obedience to God’s will for women. She has sent her son off to fight the infedels, more evidence of her faith. She will not allow her unwed daughter to get an abortion, but will use the family’s middle class earning power to offset the negative impacts of having a child before one is financially able to be responsible for that child. She is doing EVERYTHING right.
Most people don’t know what “earmarks” are. Most don’t care or will see it as her taking care of her own AND view that as good. Most people will not understand that Alaska is about to have a state budget issue (i.e. the residents and businesses might have to pay state taxes instead of getting huge rebates) unless there is more drilling and more oil revenues for the state. Most will even see that as OK, as long as gas for their SUV isn’t over $3/gallon.
So, I would urge everyone to think about this from the point of view of the average American who “clings to guns and God” and see that she is actually a very very substantial threat. Do not underestimate what Sarah Palin brings to the GOP ticket.
This is crucial: Sarah Palin will attract a LARGE female following and MANY women will vote for her becuase they identify with her personally EVEN if they don’t agree with her political views.
On another note, I think that as the PRO-CHOICE party who stands up for confidentiality between a woman and her doctor in regards to reproductive health, the best thing we can do is completely SHUT UP about parentage of the yongest Palin and about Sarah Palin’s choices when she was pregnant/in labor. Those are topics that should be completely OFF LIMITS about any woman, regardless of her party affliation. Otherwise, we are not walking our talk and that will only hurt us.