The Rocket

Issue date: 9/5/08 Section: Opinion

And you thought your family drama was rough. I was surfing the internet this weekend when I got an email from a friend of mine with a link to the blog Daily Kos.

Something about Sarah Palin's youngest child not being hers and actually being her teenage daughter's…and I was immediately drawn into it.

Unlike many conservative talking heads, who later condemned the story, I love a story full of drama, intrigue, and teen pregnancy.

According to the Daily Kos, all signs pointed to Bristol Palin as being the real mother of Trig, the youngest Palin child. She looked pregnant in a few pictures, and Sarah Palin did not look pregnant at all. Sure, you can cover yourself in sweaters and coats, but you'd think she'd be putting herself out there, showing off her pregnant figure.

It all just seemed shady, from Sarah Palin's surprise announcement of pregnancy at seven months, all the way down to her 3,000 mile trip after her water had broken. Palin gave a speech in Texas, flew to Seattle to change planes, then flew to Anchorage… all while being a 44-year-old-mother in labor with a premature Down Syndrome baby. Have I missed something here?

There I go, being a malicious liberal again, not doing my homework and targeting the children of candidates -- but somebody's got to do it.

I thought that flag pins, John Edwards's affair, and freedom fries were the height of internet media insanity, but I was wrong. Even Lindsey Lohan has weighed in on the issue of the Palin family.

It's turned into absolute lunacy.

When the internet gets hold of something as juicy as Sarah Palin's baby fiasco, it spreads like a virus.

I was privy to this experience last weekend. Pictures from all over the place cropped up, blogs with all sorts of angles and spin appeared, and the mainstream media ignored it until Palin said that her daughter was pregnant.

They were too busy with a hurricane to deal with a drama that rivaled All My Children.

Now the conservative right wing is coming out and saying that anyone who mentions this rumor is obscene and offensive, pinning this on Obama and his camp, when it has nothing to do with Barack Obama.

These were largely independent bloggers exploring a rumor. Not investigating rumors allows politicians to get away with things.

Not all rumors are true, but there has been plenty a rumor that has been proved accurate.

Sarah Palin is a Washington unknown, she has governed a state for 21 months that many continental Americans think is still solely comprised of gold miners who live in igloos and travel about in dogsleds.

Little did we know that gun-totin', moose-eatin', beehive-sportin' librarian-types like Sarah Palin live there, too.

What a character this woman is; she looks like a mix of Kate Pierson of the B-52s and Tina Fey.

She was the runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest, and now she's John McCain's "nurse." What can't this woman do?

Clearly, McCain's choice of Palin as his Vice President was driven by politics. McCain thinks choosing a woman for the ticket might make some women out there who were voting for Hillary Clinton solely because she was a woman, vote for him. Those women, however, are probably people who voted for George Bush in 2004.

It seems a little insulting to women, doesn't it? This theory banks on the idea that that some Clinton supporters out there are so mad at Obama, and so vehemently supportive of a woman of any political clout, that they're willing to vote for a ticket with Palin on it, even if she supports nothing that Clinton did.

That's like banking on African American voters who don't agree with Barack Obama's stances on anything, but are voting for him just because he looks like them. Maybe McCain has something cooking, here.

Still, it's not enough to win him an election, and at the moment, he just looks silly. Palin may look like a real "American" with family issues just like real "Americans," but she also looks real "unqualified."

Clearly, this election season has descended into madness. Politics are now, more than ever before, becoming a game of trying to manipulate "low information" voters into thinking that a politician is relatable.

We're willing to elect anybody to high office because they're "just like us." That's why people liked George Bush, and look at how well that turned out. Sarah Palin is not qualified, and John McCain has made a bad, though calculated, decision.

I'll just be interested to see how long until Palin is forced to step down to spend more time with her family.





Lisbeth Wells-Pratt is a sophomore creative writing major and a regular contributor to The Rocket.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools