I debated long and hard about whether I wanted to post something on Sarah Palin and her family. On the one hand, I think that all of the focus on her is largely lacking in seriousness and focuses upon some really asinine qualities. In addition, no matter what anyone says bad about her, there's a base of the population that will never desert her regardless of any kind of question or revelation. She's in the territory of having to be outed as a lesbian for her to lose support. (As an aside, I'm starting that rumor here and now, Sarah Palin is actually a lesbian, I don't have proof but only someone in the closet would pretend to be that straight and Republican.) I decided to talk about the family as a whole because they're getting a lot of news right now and causing quite of a stir.
They of course have the new show where Sarah can show off Alaska and how cute and rustic her family is on TLC. I refuse to watch the show because I renounce TLC and everything it does. It used to be somewhat educational and now it is full blown voyeurism where otherwise normal people can watch curiosities for money. It's the modern sanitized equivalent of charging people to see mental patients back in the day. The show is soft journalism at its finest and it doesn't really have to add anything meaningful politically, socially, or even really in the field of entertainment. I would much prefer to watch Sarah Palin try to name all 9 Supreme Court Justices or name a Founding Father she liked. Somewhere there was an article that talked about our obsession with Alaska given the rise of shows featuring the state, I believe the gist of it was that we liked the myth associated with the rugged determination necessary to survive there. I could only wish someone on that show would ask the Palins on the issue of Alaska receiving more federal spending than it pays back in taxes. Last I checked, self-reliance had something to do with, you know, not relying on others.
Another big issue that has been going on with regards to the Palins has been the behavior of their children Bristol and Willow. I'm going to completely ignore the issue of Willow because 16 year old girls do and say dumb stuff on Facebook, with any luck she'll learn from this and be more careful who she allows to contact her now that she has been injected into the public sphere by her mother. As for Bristol, I don't believe it when people should say that she's off limits, she injected herself into the role of spokes-model for unwed teenage mothers through her TV and public appearances. I also don't care that she's advancing on Dancing with the Stars because the show is in large part a popularity contest and she's receiving a lot of support from the demographic that likes the show along with her mother. Also, I only care about the former NFL players who go on it because I happen to like football so I'm pretty bummed out by Kurt Warner getting the boot.(Disclaimer: I don't watch the show so I don't actually know if anyone is actually good at dancing, furthermore, it really is just a means to make yourself slightly more relevant on TV.)
In many ways I have larger problems with Bristol Palin because of the fact that she's a terrible role-model. Her getting pregnant as an unmarried, teenage mother was the best thing that could happen to her from the standpoint of relevance. Because she got pregnant, she was able to draw all kinds of attention to herself and her failed policy of abstinence. In addition, she's hardly representative of the average unwed teenage mother who does not have the same kind of resources that she can draw upon. How many of this group that she supposedly speaks for gets the chance to appear on "Dancing with the Stars" and other crappy TV shows on the ABC family of networks? What's even more maddening is this obsession with abstinence education, she's living proof of its shortcomings. If she had used protection, imagine how much no one would care about her. I'm going out of a limb, but I think Meghan McCain has probably not engaged in abstinence only activities, but because she was probably smart and used protection, no one really cared about her other than to make fun of her for being curvaceous and not being enough like Bristol Palin. You know there's something wrong when the girl who gets knocked up by her white trash boyfriend is held in higher esteem than the articulate, thoughtful girl who did not.
I really don't like abstinence only education. We should be telling kids that, no you really shouldn't be having casual sex, but if you are going to do it, use protection. I will further state that I guarantee that the word Prophylactic does not appear anywhere in the Bible, making it perfectly acceptable to use one. If we weren't allowed to use them, it would have said so explicitly.
I also want to finish with yet another rumor that I am starting here and we all need to make it spread. Originally it was thought that one of Sarah Palin's other children was actually Bristol's but that's not true. What really happened was that Sarah Palin made her daughter get pregnant, she forced Levi Johnson to not wear a condom which he was totally set to do, in order to use her as a talisman of Conservative Family Values, that's the rumor we need to spread as much as possible. (I want to further point out how crazy it is that conservatives would support something like that. If they were really conservative they would have had themselves a shotgun wedding.)
No comments:
Post a Comment