Litbrit v. Dave Weigel
I have my own mixed feelings about the Sarah Palin/Trig story. I think Palin would be a horrible President regardless of whether of not Trig was her son. I do agree with Litbrit that Palin's explanations her Trig's birth do not make sense. Then again, nothing Palin says makes sense.
Litbrit takes Dave Weigal to task for his post defending Palin. Litbrit brings up the point that Palin's story of her airplane ride during a high-risk pregnancy sounds like bunk.
As you'll further recall, within a few days, various networks and newspapers reported on Sarah Palin's so-called "Wild Ride", a heroic tale of a woman in her eighth month of pregnancy (they're supposed to last nine months, Dave, or forty weeks if you want to be precise), who had ignored the customary warnings issued by obstetricians against air travel in the final trimester and was in Texas for an energy meeting with other Republican governors, and who despite waking up to leaking amniotic fluid and contractions (Palin's words, not mine, as told in interviews) did not go to the world-class hospital down the street, but rather, went to the luncheon, gave the speech (during which, she wrote, she experienced "big laughs; more contractions"), then boarded not one but two transcontinental flights, each of which took some four hours and had a layover in between, then bypassed the hospital in Anchorage--the one that had the NICU (that's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Dave) that any premature special-needs baby would require--and, she claims, delivered the baby at the Mat-Su Regional Hospital in Wasilla. The hospital that not only does not have the aforementioned facilities to care for special-needs babies, it does not even handle any high-risk births at all (high risk meaning, if the mother is over age 35. Or there are twins or triplets. You get the idea.)
The is Trig Palin's baby story makes me rather uncomfortable. I have stayed away from it. I do not believe Litbrit to be a conspiracy theorist. I would not be surprised if Palin embellished the Trig birth story to make herself seem more heroic. That doesn't mean Trig isn't her baby. That would mean Palin lied just like other candidates lie to make themselves look more favorable to voters. I won't go as far as to say Trig is not Palin's baby. If you wonder if I think Palin is a pathological liar then the answer is yes.
I do agree with Weigel that Palin's supporters would not care if Palin lied. Palin would just tell her fans that Trig is the Baby Jesus and all would be well in Alaska. Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy can go on Fox News and be taken seriously by conservatives. Palin lying abourt Trig would be the fault of the evil liberal media.
Weigel made the mistake of defending Palin on Andrew Sullivan's blog. Weigel is entitled to his viewpoint but I can't believe he is surprised by the negative feedback from Sullivan's anti-Palin readership.
Yes, I am actually in Alaska and I am not writing about Levi/Bristol. Do. Not. Care. Leave her family alone.
Mr. Weigel, you recently got your ass chewed out for your posts on Journolist. I am not as well-known a blogger but i have been slammed by Free Republic, Auto Admit and a white supremist site. Weigel was forced to resign from the Washington Post and he is still surprised by the blowback of the blogosphere. Sigh.
Labels: dave weigel, litbrit, sarah palin
posted by Michael Hussey @ 6:13 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
Gosh, I think a lot of people would be more inclined to "leave her family alone" if they didn't sell their (many) stories to magazines like Us (as in, for $$$).
I disagree. I think if it were proved that Palin lied about Trig being her biological child, it would do her in. Once that plug is pulled, it would be a race to the bottom for the the MSM, bloggers, you name it, to find every last bit of dirt they can. Remember Edwards? There are some things that go to far, even in the world of politics. Edwards didn't just cheat...he cheated on a wife with terminal cancer. Palin didn't just embellish a birth story...she lied about details such as how she felt when she was told she was carrying a child with DS, she lied about the tough decision to carry the baby to term, she lied to make herself the pro-life political star. I don't see that being brushed under the rug so fast.
The Palin family, in this case Bristol and Levi, certainly did put themselves out there. For money, too (that last US cover netted Bristol a tidy $100 large.) So any calls for "Leave the family aloooooone!" are disingenuous in the extreme.
Still, I really don't care about the family per se. What I care about is that a woman who was thisclose to being elected VP of the United States behind a 72-year-old cancer survivor, despite having no discernible talent or intelligence, was able to pull off such an enormous hoax, and the media won't go there. What I care about is that the media are willfully ignorant and complicit and sexist. What I care about is that said woman continues to lie and lie and lie as she amasses a war chest even the most jaded political junkies are starting to admit is looking awfully 2012-ish.
What I care about is that the entirety of her political bona fides rest on her being a pro-life "common sense" conservative, and her birth stories and indeed the parentage tales pertaining to the child himself are full of holes, and always were, yet few reporters would do their job when a politician's stories are full of holes: investigate.
Why is that? Deference to the right? Squeamishness? Fear?
I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I simply know, as someone who has been pregnant and given birth three times, what those things mean. What one looks like, what one does, what one's doctor advises or prohibits. I don't know for certain who gave birth to Trig. I do know for certain who didn't.
And that "wild ride" story is a baldfaced lie, one that got even more embellished as time went by. That much is certain.
I am also 99.9% sure Palin was not pregnant at all, based on a mountain of documented and dated evidence that includes the reports of flight attendants, eye-witness accounts of an Alaska resident who will not go on the record due to fear of having his dogs shot or worse, photographs and film of her (even on FOX), that show her "baby bump" far too small for the stage of pregnancy, then square-shaped, then suddenly big, then suddenly small again, before giving birth.
It does not happen that way, Michael. You can't say for sure, because you've never had a baby. I have, and I can. Sarah Palin is full of shit. And because she's a precious snowflake, no reporter will go there. This has to stop. She should be held to the same standard as a male politician who used his military background to build his political bona fides, only to have it come out that he lied about being in combat.
No, she is not bound to release medical records, even though the other three candidates released theirs (in 2008). No, she was not obligated to release Trig's birth certificate, but wouldn't that have been infinitely more caring and sensitive toward her daughter than revealing her pregnancy as "proof" that she wasn't the mother--because she was pregnant now? What kind of parent would drag a troubled teen like that onto the national stage?
Dave will not answer the question of whether or not it would matter if this were a man who'd pretended to be in combat and been caught in a lie--because he knows damned well he's wrong: of course it would matter.
I defended him when the Post fired him. I know I'm just a nobody in Florida, but I did defend him--he was, I asserted, one of the few sane and reasonable conservatives left, and the Post let him go in order to satisfy the crazies on the far right.
Now it appears he is trying to curry favor with the Palins, or something. Whatever it is, Dave has obviously thrown whatever semblance of journalistic integrity he had under the Going Rogue bus.
He is no journalist. He is now, officially, a propaganda-spewing organ who shuns evidence in favor of talking points.
Disgusting.
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