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How it is

September 3, 2008, 2:52 am

So, if you get pregnant at 17 by the man you intend to marry, it means that your mother is unfit both as a parent and a candidate, but if you get arrested in the middle of a bar brawl, it is a private, family matter that reflects in no way on your father the candidate and must be buried by the mass media.

We certainly can’t have any coverage about how you made “intimidating statements” to the police, especially if they might be of the nature of “my father is a Senator and I’ll have your job”.  Following up on that sort of thing would be a distraction.

A distraction from portraying Britsol Palin as more debauched than say, Bill Clinton was ever treated, that is.  Of course, if she was an actual candidate and had a child with a staffer that she never intended to marry because she was already married, then they would have a moral obligation to bury the rumor, even after some rag like the Enquirer breaks the story.  If she was a Democrat, of course.

Just making sure that I have that straight.

Update: More How It Is. The American people aren’t stupid.  When Bill Maher is saying that you are going too far, you’ve gone too far.  The American people will punish people who treat them with contempt at the polling place.

Category: Church of the Painful Truth

5 Comments

  1. SayUncle » Kids are off limits in political campaigns says:
    September 3, 2008 at 7:36 am

    [...] As long as they’re the kids of Democrats. [...]

  2. Manish says:
    September 3, 2008 at 11:56 pm

    So, if you get pregnant at 17 by the man you intend to marry, it means that your mother is unfit both as a parent and a candidate

    Umm..do you have even a semi-credible link that anyone has said that having a pregnant teenage daughter disqualifies Palin as a candidate? The only criticism that I’ve seen is that her child is an example of the failure of abstinence-only education in place of sex-ed while noting that Palin is against sex-ed. There has also been some ink spilled about the hypocrisy of the family values crowd seeing nothing wrong with Palin’s daughter but railing against African-American teenage mothers, but thats a whole other matter.

  3. Phelps says:
    September 4, 2008 at 10:04 am

    Aha! Trick question! Pretty much anyone talking about it has lost what credibility they had in the last week.

    How about these:

    http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080904/COLUMNISTS09/809040370
    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedishrag/2008/09/gov-sarah-palin.html

  4. Aaron says:
    September 9, 2008 at 6:08 pm

    In my opinion, the reaction to the Palin pregnancy is primarily a reaction to the party that champions family values coming to the political forefront with a pro character, pro family message being delivered by folks who don’t live up to the standard. When you parade the young man who knocked up your underage daughter on nationwide television, us voters out here are perfectly entitled to an opinion on how the Palin household is being run and what are opinion is of the candidate based on that assessment.

  5. Phelps says:
    September 9, 2008 at 7:21 pm

    I’ll turn the reigns over to Neal Stephenson for this one, from The Diamond Age:

    “You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw said. “It was all be­cause of moral rel­ativism. You see, in that sort of a cli­mate, you are not al­lowed to crit­icise oth­ers — ​after all, if there is no ab­so­lute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for crit­icism?

    “Now, this led to a good deal of gen­er­al frus­tra­tion, for peo­ple are nat­ural­ly cen­so­ri­ous and love noth­ing bet­ter than to crit­icise oth­ers’ short­com­ings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and el­evat­ed it from a ubiq­ui­tous pec­ca­dil­lo in­to the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to crit­icise an­oth­er per­son by con­trast­ing what he has es­poused with what he has ac­tu­al­ly done. In this case, you are not mak­ing any judg­ment what­so­ev­er as to the cor­rect­ness of his views or the moral­ity of his behavior — ​you are mere­ly point­ing out that he has said one thing and done an­oth­er. Vir­tu­al­ly all po­lit­ical dis­course in the days of my youth was de­vot­ed to the fer­ret­ing out of hypocrisy.

    “You wouldn’t be­lieve the things they said about the orig­inal Vic­to­ri­ans. Call­ing some­one a Vic­to­ri­an in those days was al­most like call­ing them a fas­cist or a Nazi.”

    Both Hack­worth and Ma­jor Napi­er were dumb­found­ed. “Your Grace!” Napi­er exclaimed. “I was nat­ural­ly aware that their moral stance was rad­ical­ly different from ours- but I am as­ton­ished to be in­formed that they ac­tu­al­ly condemned the first Vic­to­ri­ans.”

    “Of course they did,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw said.

    “Be­cause the first Vic­to­ri­ans were hyp­ocrites,” Hack­worth said, get­ting it.

    Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw beamed up­on Hack­worth like a mas­ter up­on his fa­vored pupil. “As you can see, Ma­jor Napi­er, my es­ti­mate of Mr. Hack­worth’s men­tal acu­ity was not ill-​found­ed.”

    “While I would nev­er have sup­posed oth­er­wise, Your Grace,” Ma­jor Napi­er said, “it is nonethe­less grat­ify­ing to have seen a demon­stra­tion.” Napi­er raised his glass in Hack­worth’s di­rec­tion.

    “Be­cause they were hyp­ocrites,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw said, af­ter ig­nit­ing his cal­abash and shoot­ing a few tremen­dous foun­tains of smoke in­to the air, “the Vic­to­ri­ans were de­spised in the late twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Many of the per­sons who held such opin­ions were, of course, guilty of the most nefarious con­duct themselves, and yet saw no para­dox in hold­ing such views be­cause they were not hyp­ocrites them­selves — ​they took no moral stances and lived by none.”

    “So they were moral­ly su­pe­ri­or to the Vic­to­ri­ans-” Ma­jor Napi­er said, still a bit snowed un­der.

    “-even though-​in fact, be­cause — ​they had no morals at all.” There was a mo­ment of silent, be­wil­dered head-​shak­ing around the cop­per ta­ble.

    “We take a some­what dif­fer­ent view of hypocrisy,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw con­tin­ued. “In the late-​twen­ti­eth-​cen­tu­ry Weltan­schau­ung, a hyp­ocrite was some­one who espoused high moral views as part of a planned cam­paign of de­cep­tion –​ he never held these be­liefs sin­cere­ly and rou­tine­ly vi­olat­ed them in pri­va­cy. Of course, most hyp­ocrites are not like that. Most of the time it’s a spir­it-​is-​will­ing, flesh-​is-​weak sort of thing.”

    “That we oc­ca­sion­al­ly vi­olate our own stat­ed moral code,” Ma­jor Napi­er said, work­ing it through, “does not im­ply that we are in­sin­cere in es­pous­ing that code.”

    “Of course not,” Fin­kle-​Mc­Graw said. “It’s per­fect­ly ob­vi­ous, re­al­ly. No one ev­er said that it was easy to hew to a strict code of con­duct. Re­al­ly, the dif­fi­cul­ties in­volved — the mis­steps we make along the way — are what make it in­ter­est­ing. The in­ter­nal, and eter­nal, strug­gle, be­tween our base im­puls­es and the rig­or­ous de­mands of our own moral sys­tem is quintessen­tial­ly hu­man. It is how we con­duct our­selves in that strug­gle that de­ter­mines how we may in time be judged by a high­er pow­er.”