The daughter of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is pregnant. What does this mean for social conservatives?
Gosh, there’s been a lot of information on the news today regarding Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. It’s definitely a hot item. It’s so juicy, it might even make the jump from MSNBC to E! News.…
Article comments
26 - troll
say goodnight Clavos
27 - Matthew T. Sussman
Troll wins with #22.
28 - Jet
Who the hell appointed you referee?
29 - Matthew T. Sussman
Wow, lighten up, Francis.
30 - Jet
Anything you say Matilda
31 - Rodney
I've started a website with regards to this story-it has a threefold purpose
1 To separate fact from fiction in regards to Sarah Palin
2 To write about Alaska
3 A girlfriend and myself are being stalked by an insane sociopath drug dealer career criminal-for the past four days she has been unable to communicate with me in any way-police are on the case but I'm trying to get the story out there for her protection in case she's been kidnapped or worse
The website is here.
32 - Jordan Richardson
I'll go with #2.
33 - Cannonshop
Amanda, I think your article raises some pretty interesting points. (steps aside as Jet and Clavos tumble across the room with Troll trying to mediate)
First point, of course, is that, like the Bush kids, we're seeing an example of offspring that don't necessarily help mom-and-dad's career. I really wondered at times if the idiotic attacks on Chelsea Clinton didn't stunt her normal emotional development and turn her into a drone for daddy's career. It's not natural for a kid to have zero rebellions, and it's not, in my opinion, natural for a politician's kid to be too focused on supporting mom-and-dad's careers.
To wit: Bristol going out and doing what teenagers with few options for entertainment or distraction tend to do with her boyfriend-probably (likely) against Mom's wishes, is reassuringly NORMAL. Teenagers are walking hormones, and Preachers' Kids are the worst in that regard. (Yah, I know Sarah's not a preacher, but she's AoG and Fundamentalist, and a public figure. It's pretty close to the same thing.)
Second: Here's your test of whether,and WHAT family values Palin-the-Governor and Palin-the-Mom subscribe to. Did she hide it in shame? No. Did she 'disinclude' her own child, or disown them? no. Is there gonna be a shotgun wedding? OH, very likely so.
Third: The grandbaby will be born. This is probably the harshest thing about it-instead of a nice, convenient Abortion that can be kept quiet, there's going to be a teenage mom in the Palin household-probably until the baby-daddy has a full time job, unless he's already employed at a job that pays enough to support a young family on Alaska Prices (Which are high for food, shelter, parts...everything that you have to import).
Talk about your punishments-Bristol's going to have to deal with being a young mother even if she goes to school-and parenting is a pretty tough job. Given the example of her mom, that's going to be hard shoes to fill enough, but she's also got the Press and the Media, and if by some odd off chance the election goes to the "R" column, the scuzzbags won't leave her be.
It should all be quite amusing to watch, for as long as the newsday is slow.
34 - Cannonshop
You know, I screwed that up. Lemme start again.
"Amanda, Your Article raises interesting Points."
(and disregard the rest of my reply-it's off-topic.)
35 - Jet
Thanks for your concern Cannon. however there seems to be so many people leaning against the right side of this website, that there's a real danger of it falling over and turning into a typical Local AM radio talk show that has to fill in time between Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck.
I'm seriously thinking of leaving until after the elections are over in order to let them continue their apparent contest to see who can come up with the best anti-liberal wisecrack.
36 - Jet
...this has been a recorded announcement...
37 - Cannonshop
Well... Jet, um...
damn.
I would suspect I've lost that contest several months ago-I'm not particularly good at humour, though Perhaps I try a bit too much...
Perhaps the reason you're hearing so much mockery of the Left, is because the Left has gotten so damned self-serious? At times, so self-serious that it's actually strident. You can tell, because of the dearth of good (or even sharp) McCain or Palin jokes- You know you're taking yourself too seriously when you can't come up with a good zinger about the other side.
The closest I've gotten to-date was posted on one of these threads, and involved speculations that McCain is Bristol's beau. (If I find it again, the teller owes me a cup of coffee and a keyboard.)
So, Here's what I think is your real problem-you're taking this whole thing too seriously by half.
Sit back, relax. find three ridiculous things about your own side, then re-address the other side's flaws. You'll probably find something biting, funny, and that will, in fact, stick.
Or, you can go back to gazing upon the wonders of your navel and listening to the same echo-chamber over and over again reassuring you that you must be SERIOUS, self-pitying, and all the rest of it.
If you choose that, that's okay, we'll find some nice conservative to make the Palin/McCain jokes, and pretend he's a liberal, so we can pretend to be incensed ("INCENSED I SAY!!!") about the slurs.
but it won't be the same. Your best friend in peer-reviewed science, or in politics, is a good enemy. A good enemy makes you think, keeps you on your toes, occasionally gets one in you can't deny or debunk.
without two sides, there is no debate.
38 - Ruvy
I looked at my own comments and at the article, and decided to give the whole thing another shot.
Perhaps, the underlying question in the piece above is how to protect our children given these realities of an oversexualized society. That is not how Amanda wrote this piece, but let's look just a bit deeper.
IMHO, the very first thing one needs to do is recognize "these realities" and set oneself mentally outside of them.
Consider.
Sarah Palin got pregnant at 18 with her first son - and then married his father, her present husband. They lucked out in their marriage. Or they worked very hard at it. They have been a success - so far. But if you look at her career - a busy professional pursuing the corruption in her society as it affected Alaska's politics - you have to ask if she was ever able to mentally set herself outside of these realities at all.
Working to make a marriage work, carrying children, working to raise them, keeping a house, keeping a husband happy, working to make a living, working to erase corruption in Alaskan society (starting from the school board and working up), one wonders if she ever had the time for reflection. Understanding "these realities" takes reflection. Sarah Palin's life over the last twenty years has been a lot of work - and work does not generally leave time for reflection.
The hard-working Palins lived in their society and did not reflect at all. Read Sarah Palin's bio. For fun, they hunt and fish in a cold climate. That too is hard work, leaving no time for reflection. So it is no surprise that one of their daughters followed mommy's path and became pregnant out of wedlock. Now Bristol Palin is carrying a bastard in her tummy, and her high-profile family needs to make the little bundle of joy legal. The meaning of that entire previous sentence has been virtually erased over the last thirty years by the sexualization of American society.
When you reflect, you realize that "these realities" weren't always realities in American society. Maybe Amanda is too young herself to understand this. But I am not. I have seen how the society I lived in changed over the decades. At first the easier availability of birth control - and the resulting easier availability of young women to sleep with - was a lot of fun. When you are fifteen or twenty, you don't understand what you need to consider over the long run. The "long run" is getting the young lady to pull her panties down for you this evening.
But by the time I was thirty, the easier availability of women to sleep with was no longer new or exciting. It was just reality. Pleasing a partner in bed, it turns out, is also work. More work - less time to reflect.
When you are fifteen or twenty, and your gonads rule your brain, it never occurs to you that every young woman has a mother - who was once a young woman herself, and who still sees herself that way at age forty, fifty or fifty-five when she looks in the mirror. You never understand the fuller profile, and all the things it implies for the young woman who has your attention. If you do not reflect at all, or more to the point, if you do not have parents who reflect and who can teach you the results of their reflection - you go after the young thing in front of you and do not consider all that comes with that young thing. Israel has no shortage of pretty young women. In fact, given that various kinds of vanity improvements are more common now than they were thirty years ago, like nose jobs, braces, etc., they are even prettier than they used to look. But now, when I stand at a bus-stop and I see them, I wonder what kind of family they come from, what mommy looks like, etc. etc.
So, the bottom line here is that protecting children from the dangers of an oversexualized society - dangers which have followed us here to Jerusalem and even to the mountain village of Ma'ale Levona - need to be combated by reflection, and by a solid line of communication with the kids, so that the product of this reflection can be shared with them. I have the distinct feeling that while there was a solid line of communication between the parents and the children in the Palin family - there has been little time for reflection. An ethic of action and doing - even if that doing isn't always within the allowable bounds of an Assembly of G-d family - seems to have won out in the Palin family.
There is nothing wrong with Amanda's piece per se, It is well written. But the issue here is not whether you teach abstinence or birth control techniques to children, which is where Amanda seems to lead us. The issue is "this is where sexualizing society gets you"; teaching either abstinence or birth control techniques to children is really deciding whether to use Band-Aids or Cur-Aids to cover the wound made by sexualizing society. It's a trivial question. It is a mere squirrel in the forest. Amanda has much bigger game to hunt - and much to reflect on in doing so.
39 - Cannonshop
*Applause*
That's a good post, Ruvy, becuase it goes back to what makes Sarah Palin so attractive to a lot of Conservatives-it's not her stances, it's that she has an ethic of "Doing", which doesn't really give pause to reflection. You've made a pretty good argument for the "Nuance" the Democrats keep talking about wrt Obama. The guy doesn't do anything, so maybe he's being reflective...
excellent post.
40 - Ruvy
Cannonshop,
You've misread my post entirely.
1. I have no criticisms of Sarah Palin as McCain's VP pick. He did fine. Further, my comments have nothing to do with Obama. I'm not talking about politics here, and frankly, this article does not belong in the politics section at all. It belongs in the culture section. But there is no used crying over spilt milk.
Sarah Palin, attractive lady that she is, is in my opinion better off in Alaska as governor - not for my sake but for the sakes of the Alaskans she has served so well. If McCain is elected, inaugurated and then keels over dead, I think she would make an excellent president for your country.
Conservative shmonservative!! She might actually do what is right here in the Middle East instead of the evil that Bush, Clinton, and then the little monkey Bush have done, and as McCain appears to promise to continue to do.
But let's not go and count the babies before they've been born, shall we? And let's try to stay on topic, eh?
2. This article has nothing to do with the politics of McCain's picking Palin or with Obama's seeming intelligence and reflective attitude.
It has to do with a teenage girl who couldn't keep her panties on, and with a teenage boy who just couldn't keep his zipper shut. In a fuckee fuckee culture, where every second article is about sex and how to get it, they only did what is natural. They went fuckee fuckee! In a consumo-porn society where every third or fourth child born is what we used to call a bastard, this is a common story, a truism.
So what? BFD? Who cares?
The only reason that this story (not Amanda's article, but the whole mess about Bristol being preggy and all) rises above the common herd is that Britol's mommy - who did the exact same thing as a teenager herself - is running for vice president of your country.
There is no surprise here. And we can't condemn Sarah Palin too much either, can we? The apple did not fall too far from the tree, and in America, such trees grow in huge forests.
3. I wrote about how to protect kids from the predatory bastards who have reduced you Americans (and by extension, the rest of us) to sex crazed idiots, all in the name of making a fast buck. That is what Amanda should be writing about in this article of hers. Her article itself isn't badly written - but she merely nods at the fact that there is a real problem, and does not consider possible solutions at all.
She can be excused for her youth. She is young enough to be my daughter. To expect her to write with the wisdom of a thirty, forty or fifty year old just isn't fair. But you, who have been around the block a few times and who should know better, miss that target entirely.
Why am I not surprised?
41 - Cannonshop
Nah, Ruvy, I got your original message, but it set me to thinking...how would a person on the other side of the debate twist it?
Seriously. I'm trying to think "Outside the box" here. How would someone on the left twist Ruvy's excellent insight into an argument against Palin and for Obama, while missing entirely the predatory sex-obsession-culture that has permeated the U.S. and much of the western world?
'cause you know, and I know, that the real problem is saturation, and the saturation has happened because it appeals to the Lowest Common Denominator of thought, the adolescent "Gotta getta Laid" thinking common to people who think consequences are wrong in and of themselves.
This has happened to Republics before-the fall of Rome from Republic to Dictatorship was accompanied by similar changes in the culture, and the overreactions against it as well. (dammit, now I'm going to have to do an article using the classics. Ah well, some actual scholarship should kill the time between picket duties during the strike, and some good, shred-able attempt at amatuer classical scholarship might even provide the wiser heads 'round here with a laugh or two.)
42 - Ruvy
Heh!
How would someone on the left twist Ruvy's excellent insight into an argument against Palin and for Obama, while missing entirely the predatory sex-obsession-culture that has permeated the U.S. and much of the western world?
Cannonshop, just go to Lisa Solod Warren. She's got all the answers to your puzzle. And she has been popping out anti-Palin screeds much faster than Sarah Palin popped out rug-rats....
You made me smile, dude, you made me smile....
43 - Amanda Bittle
Ruvy,
I think I understand your point, but let me make sure:
Are you saying that, because the sexualization of our nation is a problem in and of itself, we should not bother to consider how to protect our children from it in the here and now? That it is MORE important to reflect on WHY our culture is the way it is, and on how to make major changes in it?
Teaching our children about abstinence and/or birth control IS a "band-aid," as you say, but that does NOT mean it is not important. It will be a long time before our culture changes, I think, and in the meantime we need a survival plan.
With this article, I did not intend to address the larger philosophical issues surrounding the bizarre and contradictory attitudes American have toward sexuality. That would require a much larger piece, probably a series of pieces.
I do appreciate your focus on the bigger picture, though. That's important, too. Perhaps a two-fold approach would be best? Helping our kids to navigate the culture the way it is, but also focusing on long-term changes that would create a healthier environment for future generations?
44 - Ruvy
Amanda,
Perhaps a two-fold approach would be best? Helping our kids to navigate the culture the way it is, but also focusing on long-term changes that would create a healthier environment for future generations?
BINGO! You hit the nail right on the head, Amanda. You got a hole in one, if you don't mind the bad pun and mixed metaphors....
I've attempted to teach our sons abstinence, (my wife pushes harder on that issue than I) but also recognize the need for birth control devices of one kind or another. That's so that they don't surprise us with some young lady with a rounded belly coming to stay for a while.... You just can't be a one-note Johnny in a multi-tuned world.
But, in addition to all this, I've concentrated on that bigger picture - the oversexualized society and who (in my opinion) benefits and how they (the boys) - and the rest of us - get screwed over.
In addition, I've concentrated on history. You cannot know in your gut what the world was like without fatal and incurable diseases like AIDS. You are just too young to. Because of this, there was, for a few short years, an immense amount of sexual freedom. It was within this spirit of sexual freedom that young men and women (like I once was) were able to pursue each other like satyrs in a forest. Emotionally, it was a different world thirty years ago, heady with pleasures untasted and with roses that seemed to have no thorns. This too, you need to understand, and it is difficult to get that across....
A couple of points, if I might toss them in, though. First of all, the culture will not change unless we make the effort to change it ourselves. That is a slow and difficult process. Secondly, we should be careful about moral condemnation. All of us live in glass houses when it comes to "following that which our eyes lust after". That is why, for all of my annoyance with and contempt for America's consumo-porn society, I don't throw around phrases like "cheap whore", "tramp", "slut", or "rutting stag" to describe those involved with all this. By those standards, I was once just a rutting stag with hot eyes and roving hands myself, and the young women who consented to enjoy sex with me would have then been tramps, sluts and cheap whores themselves.
45 - pleasexcusetheinterruption
Wow, you have a pretty low opinion of your man's character, don't you Jet?
I'm not even voting for him, and I think he has more character than that.
Oh come on Clavos, you can't be serious. Since when did you think so highly of politicians? These campaigns go through so many details to gain any advantage possible. Of course Obama is hoping people are turned off by the Palin teenage pregnancy. And of course he wants other people to make an issue of it. And of course he wants to appear above the fray.
I will say deep down he wishes we could all move beyond this but as long as the political arena is dominated by 'wedge' issues (abortion, gay marriage, sex ed, taxes, gun control etc.) it's not going to happen.
And do not doubt for a second the right would seize onto a Barrack family teenage pregnancy out of marriage in a heart beat. They would probably make a far bigger deal out of it than the left has.