Bristol Palin’s Choice

As I’ve mentioned before on this website, the manner in which Gov. Palin was treated by the mainstream media and members of the left (but I repeat myself) during the last election seriously tested my faith in the decency of my countrymen.

The treatment of Bristol Palin has nearly finished it off for good.

I have become particularly sensitive to criticism of this young woman because I was once critical of her myself, and after serious reflection, I was ashamed of my attitude.

Imagine having to go through an embarrassing, frightening, and life changing experience with the whole world watching you and mocking you.

Imagine finding yourself attacked by the very people who should be your mother’s political allies. Many of the very publications, think tanks and media resources that conservatives rely on to defend themselves against the overwhelming barrage of leftwing media have abandoned Bristol Palin to her fate. I suppose this shouldn’t surprise us. They did the same to her mother.

I came to the sad realization last November that powerhouse conservative media organizations could not be relied upon to defend Gov. Palin. Many of them never really liked her in the first place. The smart ones rallied around her because they knew that she was their only hope for winning the election, but after the financial collapse last October, nothing could have saved the GOP ticket – not even Sarah Barracuda. The fair-weather conservative elites had no use for her after that. I got involved with this website partly because I knew that none of the big shots would deign to defend her day in and day out the way that we do.

Scratch the surface of these elites and you see that their attitude towards her is just like all the others who dismissed her and underestimated her. She didn’t go to the right schools. She’s probably never read Niebuhr. She speaks with a “Fargo” accent. She doesn’t wear the right clothes. She says folksy things like “holy moly” and “doggoneit” and “big darn deal” and is apparently unaware that there is anything wrong with that.

I knew that these people would never defend her. They don’t respect her. They respect power, and they will flock to whomever has it. That’s why they hovered around her last January when she was at the Alfalfa dinner. There was the sense that she could be powerful.

After that dinner she went home and tried to get back to work, but was forced to endure months of relentless tabloidization and anklebiting. You know what I mean by anklebiting. Let me explain what I mean by tabloidization.

Our leftwing media wants us to believe that Sarah Palin is a liar, a hypocrite, an incompetent hick, a ruthless Evita-like figure, or all of the above. They’ve been able to convince most liberals of this. But not all of the independents and moderate conservatives were convinced. So then they started in with the tabloid style reporting of her family. Their goal was to get people to throw their hands up and say, “She’s a nice lady, but she’s just got too much baggage with all these tabloid-like family dramas.”

The media creates the “tabloidization of Sarah Palin” and then turns around and reports to us that she’s got too many problems and is too tabloidized to be taken seriously. That’s how the game is played.

They tabloidized her for months. And it worked on many of the fair-weather conservative elites (the ones that didn’t hate her already). Now they cringe when they hear her name.

She went to Evansville to give a speech before thousands of ordinary mid-westerners. She opened her heart to them and laid out her testimony in a way that I’ve never seen a politician do before. The ordinary people noticed. And then our leftwing media noticed too. They noticed because they were startled by how effective her message could be in challenging the culture of death. They trained their weapons on that speech and fired.

But oddly enough, that powerhouse premier conservative institution, National Review, was totally silent about her speech in Evansville. Kathryn Jean Lopez and Ramesh Ponnuru are some of the most consistent and eloquent defenders of the culture of life, and yet they had nothing to say about one of the most powerful and publicized pro-life speeches in decades.

Why?

And why is Bill Bennett attacking an 18-year-old girl who chose life and is now encouraging other girls to choose abstinence? Would Bennett prefer that she had quietly aborted the baby? I suppose he would prefer that she had not sinned at all. But that’s awfully judgmental coming from a chronic and compulsive gambler. (Hey, Bill, check out Matthew 7:5. Meditate on it. And, as a fellow Catholic, may I suggest that you reflect on the lives of the saints. Take St. Augustine for example. Before his conversion, he had a mistress and fathered an illegitimate son by her. He loved his son despite the circumstances of his birth. In fact, St. Augustine was not ashamed to admit that he loved his mistress too and the loss of her helped lead him to God.)

Just yesterday, I read an ignorant and sanctimonious attack on Bristol Palin written by a conservative (at least that’s what I assume he is) at the American Spectator named Christopher Orlet.

Orlet finds it laughable that a teenage mother like Bristol Palin would be chosen as a spokesperson for abstinence. Apparently he’s never heard of former drug addicts and alcoholics speaking out about the dangers of substance abuse.

Bristol Palin is the perfect spokesperson for abstinence because she can say the following with absolute conviction and credibility:

“Girls need to imagine and picture their life with a screaming newborn baby and then think before they have sex,” she tells PEOPLE. “Think about the consequences.”

[...]

“If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex,” says Bristol, sitting at her parents’ lakeside patio table. “Trust me. Nobody.”

But, you see, Bristol is also a very attractive young woman, and she looks on her son with genuine love; so this buffoon at the American Spectator thinks that she is sending a “mixed-message.” He thinks an unwed pregnant teenage crack addict would be a better spokesperson to scare teenagers straight. The more abhorrent the better. Apparently he doesn’t realize that teenage pregnancy is on the rise among white middle class teenagers just like Bristol. A spokesperson should ideally be someone the target audience can relate to.

Bristol was a good student and athlete, came from a stable two-parent home, and had an after school job. Yet it happened to her. It happens to girls like her all the time. That’s why she’s a good spokesperson for this.

The smarmy Mr. Orlet writes:

Despite her rhetoric about the hardships of motherhood, [Bristol] Palin’s baby is certainly not the burden it would be for most single teen moms. No doubt she will have a lot of expensive help in the governor’s mansion when it comes to child rearing. When Bristol goes off to college, the governor’s grandchild will have the best governesses, or will attend the best daycare, and, later, the best private schools.

Perhaps he’s unaware that the Palin children all attend public schools. But of course he wouldn’t know that. He doesn’t really know anything about the Palins. If he did, he would have known this:

Her mom may be governor, but there is no nanny in the Palin house. Bristol gets up – usually twice during the night – to feed Tripp, who sleeps in a hand-me-down crib in her bedroom, and she says she has tapped out at least one school paper with her son crying in the background. She breastfed her baby for a month, pumping milk before class and rushing straight home to feed him. And she worked two part-time jobs to help pay for the diapers and formula her parents otherwise supply.

Yeah, sounds like a dream life to me.

Orlet doesn’t spare Bristol’s mother either. He regurgitates the false claim that “Gov. Palin had been preaching the virtues of “abstinence only” for years.” No, she hadn’t. She’s always had a very pragmatic position – much to the horror of people like Bill Bennett. She doesn’t get credit for her pragmatic position from independents because our leftwing media always gets her position wrong. So she gets hit from the right for her position, but gets no respect from the left for it. (Welcome to the world of Sarah Palin.)

Orlet claims that Bristol is basking in her newfound celebrity. When did this girl ever ask for celebrity? In a recent interview, her mother recounted what this newfound “celebrity” is really like for Bristol:

Sarah: ...Just the other day Bristol and Willow were at Wal-mart and Bristol called me and said, ‘Mom, you will not believe what I’m reading on the cover of the National Enquirer!’ At first I said, ‘Don’t even waste your brain cells!’ But she was upset because the inside story said that she used drugs and that I was trying to talk her out of getting married. It gave me an opportunity to tell her that if we let it, lies and criticism can consume us to the point of becoming paralyzed. We have to answer our critics with how we live our lives.

It sure sounds like Bristol loves her newfound “celebrity” status, doesn’t it? It’s so nice seeing your face on tabloids and hearing the intimate details of your life picked apart on talk shows. Who wouldn’t want that?

Friends, I must be brutal in my application of invective. Forgive me, but Christopher Orlet is a self-righteous ass.

As for Bristol’s interview with People Magazine, no doubt some will ask, “If she doesn’t like the limelight, why did she agree to be interviewed by People Magazine?” Well, People Magazine was going to write a story about her graduation whether the Palins liked it or not. The best way to control the outcome is to grant the interview on your terms. Even still, people will glom onto snippets of the interview to infer all sorts of things.

The Associated Press did just that:

The magazine also quoted Todd Palin saying he had never spoken to his daughter about sex or contraception.

“She had enough information out there and enough examples out there. If she had questions, they would be answered,” Palin said.

I can see the headline in the next Bonnie Erbe/Margaret Carlson column: “The Palins kept their daughter ignorant!”

How many fathers out there have had frank “how to” discussions with their teenage daughters about sex and contraception. Tell the truth.

Interestingly, the Associated Press failed to quote the very next sentence in that People Magazine article:

Bristol herself says she knew about birth control -- “I was definitely educated”...

I wonder why they chose to leave that part out?

I’ve said all that I can say about the media treatment of Bristol Palin. I have come to expect the left to behave like heartless savages, but it’s another thing altogether when conservatives pile on a brave young woman who chose life.

Again, I ask: Would they have preferred that she abort? Do they not see that their treatment of Bristol Palin discourages embarrassed young teenage mothers from choosing life. It encourages them to abort. No matter whether you teach abstinence or contraception, a certain number of girls will get pregnant. It happens. What they do afterwards is a matter of life and death.

The Palins chose life. They walked the walk.

Do these conservatives really think that they can promote a culture of life by vilifying a young woman who chose life?

What would St. Augustine say?

Please take a look at Seth Adam Smith’s video excerpting Gov. Palin’s Evansville speech, and then do me a favor, friends. Email it to Kathryn Jean Lopez and Ramesh Ponnuru and ask them what they think of it.