Posted by
The Valletta Papers on Tuesday, September 02, 2008 4:59:59 PM
News surfaced this past Labor Day Weekend that Sarah Palin’s
seventeen-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Her decision after
counseling with her parents is that she will marry her boyfriend, the baby’s father,
and raise the baby. The main-stream media is in a fevered frenzy over the
revelation. Already, the public has been barraged with over 3000 news
articles after the story broke this past weekend.
The mainstream spin on this story provides an example
of media bias. The New York Times has
yet to run a story connecting Obama and Tony Rezko. Nor have they published anything
on the connection between Obama and William Ayers. The Times has not covered Obama’s
votes opposing the Born-Alive Act. They have completely neglected Obama’s
support for $3.4 million in earmarks for a lobbyist who happens to be Sen.
Biden's son. The New York Times acknowledged the John Edwards’ affair with
Rielle Hunter long after they had the details; and then, only begrudgingly
after Edwards’ public admission. Senator Joe Biden’s plagiarism that forced him
out of the presidential race three decades ago is simply portrayed as old and irrelevant
news. Yet, Today’s edition of the New York
Times is running three top stories on the 2008 Republican Convention – all pertaining
to Bristol’s baby.
Liberal orthodoxy and intolerance are on display. Although the
McCain camp indicated that they became aware of Bristol’s pregnancy while they
were vetting her mother for the Vice Presidency. It was not considered an
obstacle. However, many in the liberal press, the leftist blogs, and the
Democrat Party consider it a major concern. The problem to “progressives” was
not that there was sex among unmarried minors. The real affront to liberal
sensibilities is that this intimacy may lead to life. And even worse, the Palin
parents actually participated in decisions for Bristol and her boyfriend to
marry and provide the baby with a loving family. To the left this only showcases
Sarah Palin’s “controversial” world view, which includes support for abstinence
education, but not reproductive privacy (i.e., meaning children’s right to sex
education, birth control, and abortion without the knowledge and permission of
their parents). (See, for example, Jane
Smiley’s “Women’s Issue,” on Huffington
Post).
Some of the same critics argue that Bristol’s pregnancy provides
evidence of Governor Palin’s poor judgment. They contend that Palin should not
have accepted the Veep nomination with all that is going on in her family,
especially Trig Palin’s Down Syndrome and Bristol’s pregnancy. Such arguments
seem hypocritical coming from those who have persistently advocated women’s rights at
all costs, and no rights for the defenseless unborn.
As to the direct issue of Sarah Palin’s judgment: Is it better
judgment to consider life a divine gift and to rejoice in the birth of a
newborn with Down Syndrome as a “perfect” miracle from God? Or, is it better
judgment to declare at a town hall meeting in Johnson, Pennsylvania in March of
this year, as Barak Obama did that if [his girls] “make a mistake, I don't want
them punished with a baby.” That’s right; he does not want them to be “punished
with a baby.” How is that for good judgment?