What is this supposed to accomplish?
That, I think, is the question that needs to be answered by Andrew and any one else helping to give credence to the rumors currently swirling around the Palin family about the parentage of its youngest member.
Does the fact that the Palins are a political family mean that the lines of public and private are blurred in their case? Yes. Is it reasonable to hold politicians and others in positions of leadership to somewhat higher standards than we hold ourselves, or expect ourselves to be held? Yes. Will the decision to place this child - or, perhaps, allow this child to be placed - at the forefront of Sarah Palin’s biography have been at the very least a morally suspect one if she is not in fact its biological mother? Once again, yes. But none of this justifies the decision to make a very public issue out of a bunch of half-baked speculations, insinuations, and loose threads: it is one thing for a reporter to investigate such matters quietly and carefully put together the pieces before taking the story to press, but quite another for a horde of rumor-chasing amateurs to shout it from the rooftops when unanswered questions are all that they have.
If Sarah Palin chose to pretend to carry and birth her daughter’s child and then to claim it as her own, the decision was no doubt made under a tremendous degree of fear and out of a great abundance of love. Was it - or would it have been - nevertheless a decision that was foolish, irresponsible, and even unethical? Surely. But it is also the sort of decision the motivations for which (protecting a teenage child from the stigma of pregnancy, preserving a very public family from the attention such a pregnancy would have - and perhaps now has - brought, and so on) should be easily comprehensible to any of us, and should evoke our very deepest sympathies. And the consequences of making such a decision public - a tortured young woman’s self-esteem and public image, shattered; a young politician’s promising career, brought to a nasty halt; a family’s already immensely challenging dynamics, made even more tense; and a handicapped infant’s life, turned upside-down - are simply unfathomable: try as we might, none of us can comprehend the horrors that such a revelation would rain down upon the Palin family. That they deserve to face the consequences of their own actions does not mean that it is our responsibility to ensure that justice is served.
And all this holds only if the rumors are true. If the Palin family manages to produce documentation sufficient to satisfy all but the most unhinged critics (though no doubt there will still be more than enough would-be sleuths, many of them emboldened by the support they have received from the likes of Andrew Sullivan, who will refuse to let the matter go and will continue to press on in their slanders), much of the abovementioned damage will still have been done, though in this case to no end at all. The rest of us will go on with our lives, glad for the lark and happy - or perhaps disappointed - to have the matter behind us, but within the Palin family tension will reign, confidence will be shattered or at least severely damaged, young and fragile psyches will take months or years to mend, and the heavily-felt weight of this injustice may never lift. To call the actions that made for such a situation criminal would hardly be an overstatement - the people and the press have our freedom, yes, but that hardly lifts the responsibility of careful discernment. To eschew this burden, and press blindly forward with a series of volatile charges which will do lasting public and private harm whether they are true or not, is not a course that is worthy of the more careful and discerning among us.
If the Palin family did what their critics are accusing them of having done, they were no doubt going through an incomprehensible deal of suffering long before their laundry was aired before the public. If they did not do it, the trials they are currently enduring are an appalling injustice. In either case, those who have chosen to question their integrity and subject them to a kind of scrutiny that most of us cannot even begin to fathom ought to think long and hard about what they are doing.
[UPDATE: Where's the apology?]
(Image via Flickrers kellyandapril.)
Filed under: family, media/culture, politics
I agree.
What makes this even more sickening, is that it is unnecessary. If people just focused on her public record or lack thereof, they could still attack her but do so in a way that doesn’t destroy a teenager’s life and new born.
This was done because of the American public’s Caligulan voyeurism. In this the media responds to consumer demand. The narrative titillates us to no end.
This sadistic voyeurism, which takes joy in the destruction of a person’s and their loved one’s psyches, makes me feel soiled for being an American. I think we can be better than this and I am a misanthrope!!
Sometimes I wonder if conservatives regret what they did to the Clintons. It was a double edge sword, and now its being turned on them. However, I do not feel liberal schadenfreude, but regret and weariness at what we are doing to a woman and her family.
What should be off the table? How would you get everyone to agree and honor that agreement?
Steve
I have no problem with a bunch of Kossacks spinning crazy rumors, or with reporters investigating things quietly and with sufficient care. What is out of line is for somebody like Andrew Sullivan to use his platform to spur this sort of thing along. So it’s not about things being “off the table”, but rather about the way they’re put on it.
Well, unless Bristol got pregnant while still carrying Trig (around late March), we can definitively put this one to bed.
I refer you to my “Sullivan = hack” comment on an earlier post.
No Jim, that’s NOT enough:
Or maybe Sullivan needs to find a day job to supplement his hobbies. Unfriggingbelievable.
[...] Or as I put it: … it is one thing for a reporter to investigate such matters quietly and carefully put [...]
Andrew did a great service, trying to shed light on Palin’s character… while MSM was delinquent for the most part until some realized what a travesty was possibly unfolding. Her outright lies seem to be dismissed as accepted political mechanisms as well as her personal inappropriate use of the office in matters of influence and monetary gain.
Her Texas governor’s trip raises unquestionable errors in judgment if indeed pregnant of both her and her doctor. That is the story and it resonates with many rational people. To say otherwise, is to be complicit and blinded by her attractiveness, which is being used to sell newspapers and increase blogging readership.
[...] believe Sarah Palin is capable of pulling off such a cover-up. And, like Alex Massie and John Schwenkler, I don’t understand what is being accomplished by continued [...]
“What is this supposed to accomplish?” Truth. Simple truth from politicians aspiring to the highest offices. No question she used the baby as a prop, too. I cannot remember ever seeing such a young baby at a political convention and there was this little one passed from Bristol to Cindy to Willow to Todd to Piper to Levi, etc. and then Sarah parading him on stage after her speech. Honestly, I don’t know how you cover Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy and leave Trig out.
What convinced me that theres something wrong with the story was that rather than simply release the birth certificate, she threw Bristol under the bus by announcing that Bristol was (at that time, early September) 5 months pregnant (for which we have only the Palins’ say-so). If Sarah was the one who gave birth to Trig, she could just release the birth certificate, just as Obama released his birth certificate to show that he was born a citizen.
[...] believe Sarah Palin is capable of pulling off such a cover-up. And, like Alex Massie and John Schwenkler, I don’t understand what is being accomplished by continued [...]
The whole premise here is wrong. Palin politicized her family from the day she entered the race. As for Appel’s claim that Mat-Su’s births webpage is voluntary, still, why wouldn’t she have Trig up there? Why, above all, won’t she produce a birth certificate?
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2008/09/show-me-trig-palin-birth-certificate_03.html
Let’s not forget, per my blog link, that Steve Schmidt never did actually deny either this or the Sarah Palin affair story.
Jim Henley, and many others, also wants to assume, without warrant, as to when Bristol actually got pregnant with the baby she is allegedly carrying now.
Bristol’s past the eight-month mark. If we don’t see a Palin birth announcement out of the Governor’s Mansion before Christmas Day, we can have proof that the fraud is only deepening.