Oops, I got pregnant again Without a husband Oops, I made all that cash Telling girls to be chaste But I’m not that abstinent -Bristol Palin
— Top Conservative Cat (@TeaPartyCat) June 26, 2015
Columnist Dan Savage pointed out on Thursday that Bristol Palin’s announcement regarding her second pregnancy will likely be treated more favorably by conservatives, compared to their usual rhetoric regarding single mothers…. “If Bristol Palin’s last name was ‘Obama,’ the whole Hee Haw gang at Fox News would spend half of every day for the next nine months telling us that Bristol Obama has terrible parents — ‘Maybe Michelle should be less concerned with what your kids are eating and more concerned with what her kids are doing!’ — and the other half of the day pretending to fret over the terrible example that Bristol Obama was setting for other African American women and girls,” Savage wrote.
I have no interest in piling on Bristol Palin; her surname seems as if it’s cross enough to bear. With Caribou Barbie for a mother and former First Dude Todd Palin for a father, she’s not exactly dealing from the top of the genetic and moral decks. It’s not as if humility and charity was likely modeled for her to any appreciable degree; at least not nearly as much as grifting, hypocrisy, and willful ignorance of reality.
She’s an adult, so what she does with her life is her decision…or problem, depending on your perspective. I’ll agree that the hypocrisy she displays, pulling down $15k a lecture for preaching abstinence while evidently doing the horizontal mambo out of wedlock with considerable frequency, is as dishonest as it is disingenuous. Then again, integrity doesn’t seem to have ever been a core value of the Palin clan.
What distresses me is that Savage is spot on. Substitute “Malia Obama” for “Bristol Palin,” and what you’d have on your hands would be a Right-wing freakout. The talking heads at Fox News and Right-wing hate radio would be busting arteries in paroxysms of righteous outrage. The judgment would be heard from coast to coast as Barack and Michelle Obama were castigated as The Worst Parents EVER ©. The hypocrisy (and the racism behind it) is as stunning as it is wholly unsurprising…yet those guilty of it lack the self-awareness and honesty to recognize it.
I’d like to think that Americans could be possessed of an intellectual capacity sufficient to recognize self-righteous and racist Right-wing propaganda when they hear it. Then again, I believe in Santa Claus, world peace, that bacon can make the world a better, more harmonious place, and that my Vikings will win the Super Bowl before I shed my mortal coil. The Conservative media (and most media IS Conservative, owned as it is by corporations run by wealthy White males) understands that human nature being what it is, sheeple will easily and quickly believe the worst and most vile accusations without question. Particularly if it’s about a certain African-American President and his family.
In a perfect world, Bristol Palin would recognize that preaching abstinence while simultaneously getting pregnant out of wedlock may not be the best plan. Then again, hypocrisy seems to pay well…and when you’re raised by grifters, it probably seems like just another day at the office. Conservatives may make the rules, but it doesn’t mean they have to follow them.
