This time it's the daughter: "slutty teen", "whore" [Updated]

Bristol with her baby brother - photo by Emily on Flickr.

Unless you've been living in a cave, you know that within only a few days, the media sharks have shifted their feeding frenzy from Governor Palin (incidentally, am I the only person in the netosphere addressing her by her title?) to her 17 year-old daughter Bristol, who is now (gasp) pregnant.

You know, I still haven't made up my mind about Sarah Palin, but these kinds of hit jobs on her family are only pushing me into her direction.

Wildly popular gossip columnist Perez Hilton sinks as low as he can go, and calls Bristol a "slutty teen" and a "whore" on his web site. Incidentally, Sen. Obama's mother had him when she was 18, so she was likely pregnant at 17 as well. She was also unmarried. Would Hilton have called her a "slut" and a "whore"?

Us magazine, whose editor in chief supports Obama, is running this headline on the Palin family:

BABIES, LIES & SCANDAL ... - Mom of five: New embarrassing surprises

The background is a photo of Gov Palin holding her son Trig, with Down's syndrome, as if to suggest he is one of the so-called "scandals". Judging by the angry comments at their site, this wasn't popular with their readers. This may have also been payback for the Palins granting People an interview instead of Us. Compare this cover to their previous one on the Obamas at Michelle Malkin's site. Enough said?

The National Enquirer tabloid (through purely anonymous sources, of course) are alleging that Gov. Palin had an affair with her husband's business partner.

Andrew Sullivan is becoming increasingly unhinged with a desperate flurry of posts about Palin. One example he's written about several times already: he thinks it's a "scandal" that someone from "Jews for Jesus" spoke in the same Church the Palins attended, and asked for donations. Oh the horror! He has also arrogantly made repeated requests for the Palins to hand over their medical records. Since he is well, no one special, I'm not sure why he seems to think his calls should be answered (he can't even vote as he is not a US citizen).

What ever happened to reporting on the actual issues?

To his credit - and not that of his supporters - Barack Obama said firmly that he believed these kind of stories were off limits. Whenever Bush says something like that, his detractors accuse him of playing the high road while his cronies went low. I'll give Sen. Obama the benefit of the doubt here that he is sincere.

However, his friends aren't listening. Sen. Barney Frank said he believes family members should be fair game. Why? According to him, because:

"They’re the ones that made an issue of her family."

The only reason why they made them an issue was to answer the ridiculous rumors that Gov. Palin's son Trig was really her grandson!

YM editor and regular Huffington Post columnist Bonnie Fuller actually accuses Gov. Palin of "exploiting" her daughter's pregnancy, being the "worst mother since Lynne Spears" (Britney Spears' mother), and of forcing her daughter into a shotgun marriage. She gives no evidence for any of this, but I guess that's not important to her. I guess we are to believe that simply announcing Bristol's pregnancy is equivalent to "exploitation"? Especially when Gov. Palin had little choice - the media were already swarmed with rumors, and Bristol's pregnancy would have been impossible to hide forever under this kind of scrutiny. And people like Ms. Fuller are only adding to that scrutiny. What is just as disturbing are the number of commenters who claim that Gov. Palin is a bad parent because she is still working while she has a special-needs baby. Is that really the liberal philosophy? Isn't there, I don't know... a father available as well? Don't they think he can contribute?

Steve Sailer has an interesting post up about how one of the reasons this story is so big is that humans are always fascinated with fertility. Can't argue with that. His blog is also surprisingly supportive of Gov. Palin overall.

Anyway, if you can't win on the issues, resort to attacking the innocent. That seems to be the plan here.

UPDATE Sep 4, 7:24 AM:
Ross Douthat is a blogger I'm probably going to read a bit more in the future; he also writes for the Atlantic but he's a far more sane version of Andrew Sullivan. Regarding this story, he points out that in a single day the mighty New York Times had no less than three above the fold stories on this 17 year-old's pregnancy. He also condemns Richard Cohen's retching article comparing Gov Palin to Caligula's horse (in one of his odd moods, the Roman emperor Caligula once appointed his horse to be counsul of Rome).



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