The liberal media is under-reporting the personal life of Sarah Palin and her children, complains the conservative Media Research Center—at least, that was their complaint in May. "The national news rarely covers much from Alaska," Tim Graham wrote in an "Omission Watch," adding, "but this story also has a heartwarming pro-life angle, which offers a political reason for the media to go whistling past it."
This was, of course, before Governor Palin was tapped to be the GOP vice-presidential nominee. And Graham was not referring to the dramatic news of seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin's pregnancy, but, instead, how Sarah Palin "proved she's pro-life by personal example ... [by giving] birth to a son with Downs syndrome and announc[ing] her delight at God's blessing." Conservatives politicized the infant at the governor's urging, telling reporters after his birth that she and her husband have "both been very vocal about being pro-life. We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential." Just last week, the Christian Coalition repeated this quote in their press release applauding Palin’s nomination.
Even with scandal swirling around Bristol's pregnancy, abortion opponents have not been shy about using the infant as a living emblem of their cause. "We already know that John McCain is pro-life while Obama is pro-choice but there's a new factor: Trig Paxson Van Palin, the infant son of the governor, who has Down syndrome," wrote Timothy Shriver today for Newsweek. "Trig could be a game changer. "
With her daughter's pregnancy in the spotlight, Palin and her allies now want to drop the media curtain over her family: "We ask the media to respect our daughter and [father] Levi's privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates." Presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters that her pro-life boss believes "that this is a private family matter" for the Palin family.
Bristol’s pregnancy has conservatives twisting all kinds of pretzels on the privacy issue. Speaking on Fox News yesterday, John McCain advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer told America that she is the mother of five, an oddly personal fact for a campaign advisor to share on national television. What made it even weirder was that she made this disclosure while arguing that the Palins' family life shouldn't be in the media. "I have five teenagers myself," she told Fox News host Megyn Kelly. "We have all had to deal with this at some point in our extended family.... it's a private personal matter."
While Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus is no fan of Palin's stands on reproductive rights, she, too, grounds her analysis of the pregnancy story in her moral authority as a mother. "I have two daughters back home, 11 and 13 - close enough to Bristol's age that I cannot comfort myself that her situation is a far-off irrelevance," she writes. And while Marcus expresses sympathy for the Palin family, she rejects the notion that they are entitled to privacy on this matter: "Like it or not, Bristol Palin's pregnancy is intertwined with an important public policy debate about which the two parties differ and on which Sarah Palin has been outspoken." Marcus says she plans to use this situation as an opportunity to "teach the muddled message that is the only one that makes sense to me in the messy modern world: Wait, please. But whenever you choose to have sex, don't do it without contraception."
Abortion-rights advocates have long argued that privacy is at the crux of the abortion issue, and some find it ironic that the GOP is now arguing that Bristol's pregnancy is a "private matter." "Bristol Palin's pregnancy is at the heart of what women and the right wing have been fighting over for thirty years, and it isn't abortion, it's privacy and the right to control your own reproductive choices," writes Jane Smiley on Huffington Post. "Sarah Palin and her church and her pastor have made themselves abundantly clear on issues of reproductive privacy - there won't be any."
A family that politicized its children in one setting now wants privacy in another, while a party that has long rejected abortion-rights activists’ claims that reproductive freedoms spring from a right to privacy are now demanding privacy for Bristol Palin’s choice. A feminist friend of mine was so exasperated that she wrote, "Am I in a twilight zone or something? Republicans are running around saying pregnancy is a private family matter and that people can sometimes make mistakes? I don't understand this; I think I should go back to bed."
Had Palin been smart she woudl have leaked to the press that John Edwards was the father, then no one would have covered it.
And just to clear up the straw man I am seeing over and over here: Privacy doesn’t mean you have the right to murder your child in an abortion mill. Privacy means that Bristol isn’t running for jack shit, so she is no more game than the children of any candidate.
The MSM will expend every effort to skewer a 17 year-old kid for getting knocked up by her boyfriend, but will not send a single "professional journalist" to take John Edwards to task on his silly lies.
Such is the state of "professional journalism" in America.
Not a single mention of the scurrilous rumors on liberal blogs that drove the Palins' announcement. Instead, Feder pretends it came out of nowhere. This too is "the state of professional journalism in America."
The media’s trumpeting of a 17 year old’s pregnancy is appalling, its collective hypocrisy staggering. Obama has often chided that we should be our brother’s keeper, but where are the news reports of his half brother, living in abject poverty in Africa? Where are the follow up stories on John Edwards?
How does it feel to smear a teenager for political purposes? Take a good look a yourself in the mirror, Lester.
There's a bit of shrillness going on here. I don't see any smearing or skewering happening in Feder's piece. It's sad that the details of Palin's pregnancy have been dug up, leered at, and exaggerated by partisan bloggers, but I still believe there's a story here, relating to Palin's professed pro-life, pro-abstinence stance. If you're a woman (or man) who has followed the abortion issue through the decades, this story matters to you.
Also, as to the "scurrilous rumors on blogs", isnt that precisely how the Edwards story came out?
Funny. We have folks on here talking about Obama's brother living in poverty, which has been debunked (remember, he was only his half brother born from a father he met only once). We have right wingers on here decrying the rumor mill of "liberal" blogs that brought this up, which is untrue as well. Because the rumors started in Alaska last year when Palin gave birth to her son Trig. The only people making a big deal about this are the right wing blogs and right wing talk radio who are using it to beat down the left for some alleged indiscretion (Remember Obama said children are off limits, period..).
And if you will all remember, Edwards WAS interviewed about his cheating on his wife that happened 2 years ago on Nightline, which is a well respected news program on that thing we like to call the TV. Just because you all ignore things that happen around you, doesn't mean that they haven't happened.
I do love the talking points the crazed right wingers brought in here though, so easily debunked and dismissed.
Debunked? If you think that reporters were getting their cues from Anchorage and not from the Daily Kos you've been sniffing glue too long.
Since when is one question on Nightline two years ago (I'll take your word that it even was asked) equivalent to being plastered across the front page of every paper in the country?
I did specify that he was Obama's half brother. He's still in poverty and still giving the lie to Obama's pious sentiments.
John Edwards was on Nightline on August 11. The story was also "plastered" across newspapers for several days. I'm unsure what more people wanted to happen with this story. It had limited public relevance when it was revealed, was milked for all of its squalid details in short order, and is no longer relevant news.
Mr. Woodard wrote:
"John Edwards was on Nightline on August 11. The story was also "plastered" across newspapers for several days. I'm unsure what more people wanted to happen with this story"
padikiller notes:
Thus the disconnect between "professional journalism" and the information that "people want"...
I strongly doubt that the American people as a whole (not that it is possible to speak of them as a singular entity) wanted any more out of the story. Edwards' political career is effectively ruined and his marriage strained. Since he broke no law and expressed contrition (albeit oddly) for his misdeeds, it seems odd to urge the press to continue to flog the story.
Evan Woodward wrote:
Since he broke no law and expressed contrition (albeit oddly) for his misdeeds, it seems odd to urge the press to continue to flog the story.
padikiller responds:
Why is a self-proclaimed "professional journalist" so quick to believe that Edwards (an admitted liar) "broke no law" given the fact that there is a ton of evidence to indicate that campaign funds were funneled to Baby Mamma under the table?
Why is a self-proclaimed "professional journalist" willing to believe that Edwards ((the aforementioned admitted liar) honestly "expressed contrition" when he was permitted to control the flow of the story by choosing come clean in an interview by the interviewer of his choice, by timing the interview to air late on a Friday night just after the opening ceremonies of the Olympics, and, most importantly, when there is evidence that Edwards lie through his teeth during his mea culpa?
See, when a lying presidential candidate gets caught in a scandal like this, there is a process that demands that instead of sitting on the story for a month and then taking the lying candidate's canned words as gospel, one must instead remain skeptical and make some effort to independently "investigate" some of those "fact-thingies" to get to the bottom of the story.
This process is called J-O-U-R-N-A-L-I-S-M.
I'm unsure why you call me a "self-proclaimed" journalist, as I've never "proclaimed" that. I'm merely an amateur news observer who happens to comment here. Obviously, the Edwards story was handled in a strange way. That's been addressed here and in a couple other venues with far more sober language than you use (many resisted the term "baby mamma", for instance). Many journalists have confessed that they sat on the story because it was coming from the Inquirer, and because Edwards wasn't exactly in the public eye at the time. Whether this was right or not is open for debate, but personally, I find the story to be of little import to most Americans. Again, you seem to want to see him crucified, which is not the role of the media in this country, or at least it shouldn't be. The publlic gains nothing from having an infidelity scandal flogged in the press for weeks on end.
Don't worry, Padi! Your favorite reporters from the National Enquirer are on the scene in Alaska right now! They'll find out the truth, don't you worry!