I'm listening to three young blogger-radio reporters from a lefty Canadian radio program (lots of "aboot" in the air) talk about their day. They're on the other side of the blue curtain here, so I don't know what they look like. One was just on the phone coordinating with "the Socialist World people." A woman reporter from the site just joined the two guys. She's been out reporting, and said she talked to an Evangelical about Bristol Palin's pregnancy.
"She was really beautiful," the woman said. "This pregnancy thing hasn't turned them off. If anything, it's rallying them to embrace her." The reporter said this as if it well and truly was shocking. She wasn't being condescending at all; she was really shocked. She spoke with the amazement of an anthropology grad student on her first dig.
Earlier, I got into a slightly heated conversation with a black male big-city journalist who describes himself as a Republican. He hates the Palin choice. Absolutely despises it.
"Let's face it, she's white trash," he said.
Excuse me?
"She's trailer trash." He then went on a tear about Bristol Palin, and brought up things about Sarah Palin that have already been debunked, or were flat-out lies. He concluded by confiding that women are bad news -- especially black women -- and that all they really want is to use men sexually (the language he used was rather more colorful) to get ahead in life. This is how he came to father a child out of wedlock years ago, he explained.
Man, I tell you, having a black man and a woman running on presidential tickets this year is summoning up some hideous demons.
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@ David J. White 2:39 PM
My problem with your P.O.V. is that you treat minor children like non-humans. This is not an episode of Law and Order, and Bristol is not an issue for cross examination. She's a person in her own right and a minor at that. As a society our consideration needs to be for the child first.
Just because you believe someone has done something wrong doesn't make it okay to indulge in it yourself. I get the sense that a lot of people are actively indulging their own sexually perverse natures and REALLY can't keep their eyes, thoughts, and words off of a young girl's uterus.
By your logic, it's perfectly permissible for you to satisfy your personal taste for kiddie porn as long as the person who sells you the child is a legal guardian. After all - they're opening the door, right?
Um, huh? Where did kiddie porn get into this? You must be giving us a window into your own psyche, pfish, if this led you to think of kiddie porn. Kiddie porn is illegal; the wishes of the child's guardian are irrelevant.
The "opening the door" bit is a reference to testimony in court. For example, you can't claim that your client's character is off-limits when it comes to negative character testimony that would hurt your client, but then claim that you can use positive character testimony that would help your client. Either character is relevant, or it's not. If it is, the ALL of it is.
If Sarah Palin's family is relevant -- and she claimed it was, by touting "motherhood" as one of her qualifications for the job and parading her family onstage -- she can't then turn around and cry "foul" when people take a closer look at her family and draw negative conclusions about her performance as a mother.
***
Bullshit yourself, Dale. Yes, if Hillary calls herself a "proud mother" that opens the door to any investigation of her family and her abilities as a mother. Yes, if Pelosi touts herself as a grandmother, we have a right to look into the state of her family. (But I must have missed the part where Obama invoked his daughters as a defense of abortion. If he did, however, then that claim deserves scrutiny as well.)
If you make your family the public's business, then it ALL becomes the public's business. John Edwards' adultery became the public's business because he had paraded his family in front of the nation and had portrayed himself as a dutiful family man. Yes, if Nancy Pelosi touts herself as a grandmother, she is opening the door to any investigation of her family.
If you don't want your children to be political cannon fodder, keep them out of sight. Actually, the Clintons did a good job of that for awhile. In 1992, the Clintons kept Chelsea so far out of sight for such a long time during the primaries that many voters actually thought they were childless.
Now, sleazy rumormongering is still sleazy rumormongering, and it is indefensible because it is sleazy and baseless. But to claim that people should lay off your kids while you yourself are exploiting your kids for political gain ... sorry, I just don't buy it.
As a purely legal matter, not every offhand reference opens the door. Which is what "proud mother" and "don't want my daughters punished with a baby" are. Not only is no one opening the door, no one has so much as started to head for it. For you, it's battering ram time and open season.
That's nothing short of morally insane, Mr. White. At the same time, you are disturbed by sleazy rumormongering. Why? The difference between your approach and the sleazeballs' is one of degree, not kind. It certainly creates the atmosphere where sleazy behavior thrives.
Mr. White,
From a purely moral, decent perspective, should we be free to inspect for dirt and judgement the private lives of families and particularly minor children? Would you be comfortable if the local paper decided to subject your family to this sort of scrutiny? Of course not. Now if you explicitly offered to open your family up to this sort of scrutiny, including close examination of your minor children who may not fully understand or have the judgement needed to agree to this level of scrutiny, would that make the heretofore off-limits behavior acceptable? No. Some things are just wrong, even someone's parents are foolish enough to agree to it.
Put another way, if I told my child's teacher that it was OK to call my child "ugly" rather than by name and slap them across the face to get their attention, would that teacher be able to get away with actually doing it? Certainly not! A parent's foolishness does not give the rest of us license to treat their children in ways that are unacceptable.
Of course in the case of Sarah Palin and other politicians, we're rarely even offered an explicit go-ahead to subject their families to this crap. If we take simple introductions and references to one's parenting or children as permission to engage in behavior which would be unacceptable even if a clear go-ahead were given, then we are sick, terrible people.
@ Dale:
"Kiddie porn is illegal; the wishes of the child's guardian are irrelevant."
Exactly. And your obsession with the reproductive organs of a minor child is indecent. And borderline pornographic.
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