Piper Leery

Okay, fine -- so one more Palin thing (because, dammit, this really is too easy). As Oliver Willis rightly says, this is the creepiest thing you'll see on the internet today.

It's an essay from the amusingly misnomered conservative website "The American Thinker" in which the author "channels" Piper Palin, basically writing from her perspective:

"I’ve met a lot of nice people who really like my mom. They thank her for not being afraid to defend real, American values. Maybe that’s what the media can’t figure out — why so many people believe in my mom when the super-smart media tells them not to. It’s kind of like my 4th grade class elections. My friend Sally was running, but a group of really mean girls made up lies about her because they wanted their friend elected, and then everyone turned on Sally. I don’t think people even believed the lies, but they were scared those girls might say things about them, or make fun of them, so they just went along with it. Well, also Sally promised free ice cream to everyone in the lunchroom.

My mom isn’t so much bothered by what people think she is, especially the media. That’s why she’s not afraid to go to places like the East Coast, where probably not everybody likes her. I mean President Obama won’t even go on FOX News since the Super Bowl or visit a Tea Party rally. What is he so afraid of?"

Wow. That's -- interesting.

First of all, the next person who gives me any crap about occasionally dragging Palin's kids into the strike zone gets a kick to the throat. Second, and along those lines, a standing ovation to the first person who please, please, please writes a piece "channeling" Trig Palin.

The Born Insecurity: Update

Good for Salon -- they're shooting the "Trig Truther" conspiracy theory full of giant holes.

Now can you imagine a conservative website, television network or radio show releasing an extended piece thoroughly debunking the Obama birther myth?

Salon: Trig Trutherism: The Definitive Debunker/4.22.11

A Trig Too Far?

In March of 2005, an up-and-coming political writer for the New York Press named Matt Taibbi banged out a column mercilessly ridiculing Pope John Paul II, who was, at the time, just about a month away from dying. The piece was called "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope"; included among those funny things, according to Taibbi, was, "After death, saggy, furry tits of dead Pope begin inexorable process of melting away into nothingness," and "Throw a marble at the dead Pope's head. Bonk!" Such impertinence, of course, drew the immediate outrage of the Catholic League and its sour-pussed pit bull, William Donohue, as well as senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, and ultimately led to the firing of New York Press Editor Jeff Koyen.

When pressed to justify such an admittedly tasteless piece of provocation, Taibbi argued that the column was meant to be an indictment of the media's equally tasteless obsession with dead or dying celebrities -- the garish, round-the-clock elevation of anyone who happens to be hugely famous and happens to be on his or her way out, not just the pope but anyone, to saintly status. So did Taibbi make his point; could that point even be discerned through all the juvenile vulgarity; was there really a point at all or was Taibbi basically just being a rotten prick? It all depends on your perspective. Was Taibbi's piece funny? A hell of a lot of people didn't think so.

I've been thinking quite a bit about the now-legendary Taibbi Pope Slam over the past couple of days -- in the wake of the instantly infamous "birthday salute" to Trig Palin published by Wonkette on Monday. For those who haven't seen it, the piece is an intentionally exaggerated, and disastrously stupid, attack on Sarah Palin's shameless exploitation of her family as political stage props cast as a tribute to her youngest son, whom author Jack Steuf calls both a "retard" and the "Greatest Living American." To say that the column has drawn outrage would be the grossest of understatements; in a rare show of bipartisanship, it's been denounced by journalists and readers of almost every political stripe, has already cost Wonkette several of its sponsors and has forced Steuf go back and post an official apology at the top of the piece.*

So how brutal is it -- and was it out of bounds?

Well, it's pretty cruel, and it definitely pushes the boundaries of what's generally acceptable when attacking a political figure. It insinuates that Sarah Palin was drunk during her pregnancy with Trig and that regardless of whether she or Bristol is the boy's mother, Todd Palin is the father. And that doesn't even touch on the animated gif of Trig getting a pole dance from a stripper and the collage of images of his face, obviously meant to highlight his Down Syndrome.

Over the years, I've taken my fair share of shots at, well, anyone and everyone. I rarely hold back when it comes to whom I'm willing to poke fun at and I've defended on more than one occasion the right of others to engage in the kind of mockery that some might consider unacceptable. I'm one of those people who thinks that holding a person, group of people or institution above parody isn't a show of respect -- it's a brand of oppression. I can also understand Steuf's implication that Sarah Palin herself has devalued her family, rendering them -- particularly Trig -- little more than one-dimensional characters in the meta-reality show of which she's the star, and shamelessly placing them squarely in the line of fire from her adversaries. In other words -- and this is an argument I both understand and have made in the past -- you can't shove someone into the spotlight for your own personal gain then react with righteous indignation when people begin treating him or her just like any other public figure.

It's wrong to pick on a kid. It's wrong to pick on someone's family. It's wrong to pick on someone who's developmentally disabled.

The problem is that Sarah Palin made all of those qualities incidental when she drafted Trig into the service of her personal and political ambitions. Rather than shield her child from publicity, she thrust it upon him -- and when that publicity occasionally and naturally turned negative, she got the added benefit of being able to turn the tables and use him as a human shield.

None of that, of course, changes the fact that taking shots at Trig Palin is disgraceful and should be considered off-limits. But is it really a surprise that Sarah Palin's children might be used to attack her when she herself has used them to make herself powerful enough to merit being attacked? She turned them into celebrities -- like the pope, the subject of worship by some and derision by others.

No better or worse than anyone else in the public eye.

*Since I published this piece, Wonkette has taken down the Trig Palin column entirely.

A Womb With No View

I've mentioned on a couple of occasions that I've only had one piece turned down flat by the Huffington Post; that would be the one I wrote a couple of years back skewering Jenny McCarthy for her militantly ignorant stance on the supposed connection between childhood vaccines and autism.

Well, as of this morning, that number has gone up.

The HuffPo team says it's passing on the Sarah-Trig Palin column I published here yesterday. Why, I'm not quite sure -- and I didn't bother to ask since I know I'll get a nebulously deflective answer. But I'm putting this out there only because I'd be curious to see if you, dear readers, have any thoughts on it.

Obviously, the Huffington Post can publish whatever it wants; I'm not the least bit upset over this and I understand if the HuffPo brain trust -- which appreciates the notion of liability far more than I do and therefore is less likely to light everything on fire just for the hell of it -- considers the topic of the Sarah and Trig Palin rumor some kind of third-rail. But it did leave me wondering if I struck the right tone with what I wrote, given that I in no way meant to imply that there's validity to the Palin birth conspiracy theory, only that when considered relative to the Obama birther myth it would have been as worthy (or not worthy) of media scrutiny.

So, opinions? And should I now circulate the piece everywhere I can under the heading of "THE ARTICLE THE HUFFINGTON POST DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE"?

I kid.

The Born Insecurity

There's a minor amount of controversy suddenly inching its way toward the front burner of the media's consciousness again following the release of a research paper penned by a journalism professor at Northern Kentucky University. The topic: the conspiracy theory surrounding the birth of Sarah Palin's son, Trig.

For the uninitiated, back in 2008, not long after she was thrust into the spotlight by a desperate and cynically opportunistic John McCain, rumors began circulating that Trig wasn't actually Palin's son and was, instead, her grandson -- with Palin's unwed teenage daughter Bristol being the real mother and Palin stepping in to clandestinely cover for her. The story got a little traction, but it didn't take much time for just about everyone with a reputation worth protecting, including then presidential candidate Barack Obama, to declare the rumor beneath them.

And that's what Dr. Bradford W. Scharlott is now asking questions about.

Scharlott's paper doesn't focus on whether Palin perpetrated a hoax on the American public as much as it tries to understand why the media made the collective decision not to pursue the story, despite, he claims, there being enough discrepancies in the official version to at least make it worth a couple of phone calls. In other words, Scharlott wants to know why the press considered the Palin conspiracy theory off-limits while it continues to indulge those who cling to the thoroughly debunked myth that the President of the United States wasn't actually born in the United States.

Admittedly, the details of Trig Palin's birth -- the time leading up to and immediately following it and Sarah Palin's behavior and appearance during the whole thing -- are a bit curious. Is there anything in there that constitutes proof that Palin and her clan engineered, as Andrew Sullivan once wrote, "one of the biggest frauds in American political history?" No, there isn't. As with all conspiracy theories -- from the birther nonsense to the absurd claims of the 9/11 truthers -- a strange coincidence or two here and an appearance of impropriety there doesn't equal actual evidence. But is Scharlott right in claiming that the media dropped the ball when it summarily dismissed the story as being without merit? Yes, he is.

There are likely several reasons why the Palin-Trig "cover-up" didn't dominate news cycle after news cycle the way, say, the Obama birther garbage continues to.

First of all, at the time the rumor first began circulating, Palin was nowhere near the cultural force of nature she would eventually become; despite the fact that she was running for the second highest office in the land, she was still considered an anomaly and therefore hadn't racked up the long line of political and societal enemies willing to push hard to see her brought down by scandal. Compare that with President Obama, who, since he first secured the nomination, has been the target of a seemingly endless parade of shit-scared, white middle-American Christian xenophobes for whom his ascendancy represents nothing less than the loss of their country. These people keep the myth of an illegitimate Obama alive and well and refuse to take no for an answer -- and they're lent both deference and a bullhorn by media outlets like Fox News and talk radio, and by otherwise reasonable lawmakers willing to pander to them in the name of votes.

Also working against any investigation of the alleged hoax: the press's own fear of being tagged with the dreaded "liberal bias" label and the desire of liberals themselves to not be seen as willing to attack a child, or a candidate's family. Mainstream liberals often value their intellects and supposed compassion to a fault, which means that they'd rather be viewed as being above the pursuit of a petty scandal than be known as the ones who jumped neck deep into the mud just to get a scalp. While some on the right are so desperate to derail Obama that they'll go to any length, believe any negative implication, perpetuate any unfounded rumor, most on the left are still in possession of a modicum of shame and good sense and understand the enormous risk involved in going too far out on a limb in trying to ruin a political figure -- and let's face it, a false accusation of this particular magnitude could constitute an Extinction Level Event for anyone who makes it.

But don't think for a second that Sarah Palin isn't aware of every one of these little loopholes and hasn't exploited them when trying to dodge this would-be scandal and a host of others.

So is she Trig's mother or grandmother? Well, unless somebody has concrete proof to the contrary, it's the former -- and that's the end of the debate. But in the same way that the press was forced to verify Obama's birth history (which it did) just to appease the most conspiracy minded (which it didn't), maybe it should have been willing to give Sarah Palin the same consideration, or lack thereof.

Ironic how all she'd have to do to put this "controversy" to rest is -- produce the birth certificate.

"Family" Feud

Oh, come on -- you didn't really think Seth MacFarlane's decision to take a minor shot at Trig Palin's disability was gonna go unanswered by the kid's idiot mother and sister, did you?

Facebook: Sarah and Bristol Palin Respond to Family Guy Episode

To quote Andy Samberg in a sketch on last weekend's SNL in which he played Rahm Emanuel responding to Palin's last indignant outburst: "You come after me on Facebook? What are you, fourteen? Here's a status update: Grow the f--k up! Poke me again, and I will write s--t on your wall so obscene your computer will cry."

By the way, notice how Palin addresses the message to "Fox Holllywood" as opposed to her employers, the above reproach folks at Fox News Channel.