What does it take to get discredited as a moralizing right-wing “family values” merchant these days?
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
So step right up and buy your “I’m SEXY enough… to make you wait!” t-shirts, courtesy of the Candie’s Foundation — the pro-abstinence group whose ambassador is now America’s most famous “Oh, fuck it, it feels better without the rubber” Supermom, Bristol Palin!
So on a flight to London over the weekend I caught the Bristol Palin magazine cover and was blown away. What does it take to get discredited as a moralizing right-wing ”family values” merchant these days? It was one thing when we found out that super-religious governor Palin was letting Bristol’s hunkface beef accessory Levi nail her daughter more or less regularly under the family roof. It was another when we found out that the governor’s sister-in-law got popped for a B&E while her little daughter was waiting outside in the car. And it was still another thing when we found out that Levi’s Mom was going to eat a bust for dealing Oxycontin (and there’s apparently a lot behind the governor’s interest in that story). For the most part, none of this stuff is any of our business — we all have family members with issues, although mine tend to leave their kids at home when they go out to commit burglaries to support their drug habits.
But this abstinence thing with Bristol, to me, is just too much. This sort of thing always grosses me out: this country has way too many people who do stuff like this, dragging their helpless minor kids with them on national media tours or publishing lengthy parenting memoirs in which their unwitting babies play starring roles as props in Mom’s narcissistic fantasies. But this goes even beyond that. This poor little kid is going to grow up someday and find out she’s been brand-marketed to the human species by Madison Avenue as The Great Mistake. Bristol’s quote about how girls need to close their eyes and imagine spending the rest of their lives with a screaming baby before they have sex — her daughter is someday going to cough that line up, through sobs, in her fourth or fifth year of very expensive therapy. If this little kid isn’t hooked on black baggy clothes and cutting by age 11 I’ll be shocked.
But beyond that, Bristol’s casual statement about deciding not to get married after all, about how it would have been a disaster, I just don’t get how this works, politically. How can a Republican presidential candidate (and let’s not fool ourselves, Sarah Palin is already that) publicly endorse unwed teen mothering? Am I missing something?
Post Your Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment
T/S Members
Log in with your True/Slant account.
[...] Taibbi-Blog (Quoted in full): So step right up and buy your “I’m SEXY enough… to make you wait!” [...]
Matt who exactly do you expect to be condemning her thrice married Newt, drug addicted Rush, dump the first wife for a richer, hotter, younger model Johnny McCain?
She didn’t abort the kid, that’s all that matters to these people. Look at how her mother exploited carrying to term a retarded child, these people are only about exploiting whatever they can.
haha ya I really wonder what the message is from the Palin camp, as Bristol is clearly now involved and not off limits as a topic. She did say that abstinence was unrealistic, so why doesn’t she do ads for Durex? I mean you can’t be pro-life, tout the fact that you refuse to have an abortion, have the kid, and then hold up the baby to scare other teens with. This whole thing is a celebration of grotesque ignorance, but its thankfully undercutting any remaining credibility that Gov Palin may have had left.
The People cover story is a huge ad FOR teen pregnancy. Every picture is a beautiful Bristol with her adorable baby boy. She says that the life of a teenage mom is hard. Where are those photos?
The Palins… there’s got to be something in the water this family drinks. Bristol’s dad, Todd, says that he never talked with Bristol about sex or birth control because “She had enough information out there and enough examples out there. If she had questions, they would be answered.” The fact that he is saying this after his teen daughter gave birth shows what an idiot he is.
Bristol didn’t spend graduation night with her friends because she had to feed her baby… Bristol is giving up her dream of a nursing career because she doesn’t have time. But she does have time to go to a tanning salon “quite a bit”… and she does have time to do the People story and photo shoot. It’s all wrong… the Palins and People Magazine for glamorizing teen pregnancy.
“What does it take to get discredited as a moralizing right-wing “family values” merchant these days?”
It would take a political party no longer in denial. The GOP’s base refuses to acknowledge the hypocrisy it has devolved into, avoiding damage control on its crumbling value system. Bristol Palin could be a prostitute, and the party would figure out a way to spin it to their advantage. That appears to be the GOP’s current mode: spinning straw into gold. Sarah Palin partially restored a sense of purpose for the right, an impromptu contestant on Political Idol, recreating illusions of security and religion right-wingers love to indulge. That image of Palin has been burnt deeper into the conservative collective than the Virgin Mary on toast. Americans are exceptionally talented at self-delusion, needing only the right method of distraction.
For some of us, struggling to restore a sense of faith and balance after the past eight years, the Palins rank no higher in celebrity than Paris Hilton. I have a feeling Bristol Palin will not suffer near the hardships facing the jobless millions, who survive setbacks without the support of wealthy family. Sarah Palin remains a bizarre and somewhat laughable figure, at least until 2012.
Speaking of laughable, “hunkface beef accessory”? Good one, Taibbi. I’ll have to remember that one.
What if you’re not “sexy enough to make someone wait?” Then what? Is it okay then to have sex? Are we now bringing narcissism into this debate?
Bristol Palin is the worst spokesperson for this cause. She’s not some single teenage mother slaving away at McDonalds trying to buy diapers and put food in her kid’s stomach. She didn’t have to drop out of high school because there was no one else to take care of her baby. She is the daughter of a wealthy politician who lives in a big cushy house with people around her helping her pay her bills and take care of her child.
The worst thing this baby has going for her is sharing the same blood line as Sarah Palin. If that was the slogan behind this then maybe that’s a cause I can stand behind.
One of your most mean-spirited posts to day, Matt. What gives? You used to be such a compassionate person. By your own admission, you yourself have been arrested and suffered from drug addictions. And either you’ve never had unprotected sex, or the only difference between you and Bristol Palin is that you and your partner were really, really lucky.
You didn’t even get the gender of her child right. Like the above poster states, it’s a boy, not a girl. Where’s your authority on this issue, other than glancing at a magazine cover in an airport?
Bristol Palin was a minor when she got pregnant. She’s just a baby, too. In my book, that makes her off-limits, regardless of the politics of her mother.
She didn’t choose to be dragged into this any more than her baby did. Her ambitious mother is the narcissist, not her. Can’t you see Bristol and her baby are being used for nothing other than solidifying the GOP’s pro-life base? She is obviously still dependent on her parents – now more than ever. She doesn’t really have a choice.
And another thing: Lots of kids become aware that they were their parents’ “mistakes,” but that their parents love them so much, they wouldn’t change a thing. Not all babies can be planned, unfortunately. And the kids turn out just fine.
Like you didn’t make mistakes and do stupid things at that age, and well into your twenties. Or was it just that your mistakes didn’t have life-long consequences?
Leave her alone.
But Clarity, I think the bulk of Matt’s argument is actually in regards to Sarah Palin and the hypocrisy of her platform as opposed to her reality.
And Bristol is going into the media to give interviews and discuss, and her mother is there watching. Why should it be off limits if it is being put in our faces?
Her side should have the whole voice and we should have to sit on our hands and let the hypocrisy and lies spew forth?
In response to another comment. See in context »You’re not missing a thing, Matt. This is the Republicans’ M.O.: Say one thing but do the opposite, never ever cop to it, and shame anyone who has the nerve to question what you’re doing.
Her moralizing brings to mind that shrill hag Dr. Laura.
[...] to stop now.” At the other end of the life cycle, there is the teenage abstinence program. The poster girl is Bristol Palin. Yes, the same Bristol who fornicated in her parents house. The same Bristol who had her baby, and [...]
20-year plan: teen pregnancies up the gazoobo to replenish the GOP base for the 2028 election.
“But mom, Bristol Palin got pregnant! I want to get pregnant, too!”
Oh, Lordy, may the forgiving Spirit of David Koresh shine down upon us.
Apparently Bristol Palin got a vote this week in Mommergate – why did the Governor resign?
Is Governor Palin pregnant again, or is there a new fiasco coming?