Trig-onometry
Due respect to Andrew Sullivan, but this is overparsing:
The other untruth is that I have “advance[d] conspiracy theories that she is not the biological mother of Trig.” I would ask Labash to explain what conspiracy theory I have advanced. Who have I claimed is the real mother of Trig? How have I argued such a conspiracy took place? Who was in on it? There are no answers to this question because I have never advanced a single such theory. Indeed, I spent a great deal of effort not to.
Uh-huh. And I’ve never advanced conspiracy theories suggesting that Barack Obama was not born in the United States; I’ve just repeatedly asked where he was really born. So what’s the problem? All Andrew and I are asking for are the birth certificates.
Kidding aside, I refer you back to my earlier point regarding the limited value of political hypocrisy. Even if Palin weren’t Trig’s biological mother, it wouldn’t matter. That’s the Palin family’s concern, not ours.
I am equally tired of reading about the minutiae of the private lives of public figures trotted out to demonstrate their supposed hypocrisy. The problem I have is figuring out how you argue against this sort of thing without doing it yourself. To give an example: I recently considered posting on a truly salacious story about a public figure’s private life that was so completely irrelevant to anything he had said or any positions he was aligned with as to be simply yellow journalism (in the AP!). My problem was that I was trying to say that his private life was none of our business, so let’s not talk about it- and couldn’t think of a way to do that without talking about his private life!Report
If you understood how important it was that our principles be enshrined in law and how important it was that their principles not be, you wouldn’t mind so much that we bend our principles from time to time.
Indeed, the fact that you’re concern trolling about this makes me wonder whose side you’re really on.Report
Solid post, Ned.Report
Hear, hear, Ned.
The thing that bothers me most about the Trig thing is that unless you are really looking to see if someone is totally honest person or not (and really, does anyone need to do that bout Palin at this point?) I don’t understand the relevance about the answer to who her biological mother was. Assuming that what Andrew believes is true – what does it matter? It’s just families getting by as best they can.Report
You could ask where Obama was really born, but, since he has provided proof of his birthplace, you’d be ridiculed for doing so. If Palin were to do the same as Obama, and the Trig conspiracists failed to accept it, only then could they be treated like birthers.
But is it unreasonable to ask in the first place, is it just a matter for her family? A significant part of her pitch to voters is that she chose not to terminate that pregnancy. It’s more than just the Palin family’s concern if that story is a lie. Your earlier point was that personal hypocrisy does not invalidate policy, but she campaigns on personality, not policy.Report
Fair point. But as far as the primacy of identity politics goes, do we really want to accept her premise?Report
Do you mean that countering her use of identity politics, by addressing her personal story, makes it more likely that future politicians will also eschew policy in favour of personality? On the face of it I would think the opposite. She does a fine job of playing the victim though, and exploits resentment among the people she wants to identify with her. But in general I’d say that many politicians see policy-free as risk-free, and that has to be tackled somehow.Report
I’m not really talking about consequences here. I just don’t think the fact that Palin values her identity as a political asset is a good enough reason for us to start using it as a qualification or disqualification.Report
But that’s not the standard you put forward in the post. You say nothing about disqualification; you say it’s absolutely none of our business at all. We shouldn’t even inquire into the real facts behind the political story she tells about her family planning choices. That is what you say: do you stick by it?Report
I’m not sure I get your point. It seems like the hypocrisy would have occurred if there were questions that the Palins had terminated a pregnancy. That they instead (allegedly) chose to carry a child to term, and rearrange their entire family tree – and potentially hurt the carrier of the Matriarch – to honor the life of the unborn AND the born developmentally disabled child seems like walking the talk.
And this from a pro-choice Palin loather.Report
Sure, I’m just saying that it’s reasonable for Sullivan to ask the question.Report
And I agree that it is reasonable to ask the question – I just don’t think that the answer to the question is relevant.Report
I see. That may well be right. Damned if I really know why anyone supports her in the first place.Report
Because she drives the right people crazy.
It’s the same reason many people supported Bush. Had he a ‘D’ by his name, the same people would have been railing against liberal overreach.Report
And I’m just sayin’ it ain’t. He’s had two years to produce the goods, and he’s got nothin’.Report
I suspect it’s for the same reason so many swooned fro Obama – she’s a different kind of animal, one that acts like an empty jug that folks who were never very political could fill their with their personal visions and dreams.Report
I, for one, won’t be satisfied until Sarah and Trig are guests on a very special edition of Maury.Report
Engaging in pretty massive deception is a trivial matter for an elected official? What if someone running for high office wasn’t really married but only ‘married on paper’ to someone who focus group tested as popular? I mean not for nothing but I think it is a crime to knowingly lie on a birth certificate and a state governor is the highest law enforcement official in a state. Even if it isn’t, it’s not exactly good form. Kinda like the Pope having a few illegitimate kids.
Trig’s biological parent’s aren’t a great interest in themselves but there is a pretty serious character problem that Palin would have IMO if for whatever reason she did decide to fake a pregnancy and birth.Report
Yeah, no shit. The Atlantic should have either fired Sullivan or made him publish the Trig stuff somewhere else. As a result, the Atlantic has no brand value left any more and is more or less a gathering place of their bloggers, who have significant individual reputations.Report
They tried to reconfigure the site to make the blogs more obviously part of the magazine. There was a rebellion – at least amongst the readers and possibly also the writers – and they went back on it. Their big problem is they have a big off-line readership and good blogs, but they can’t direct the traffic to the main site. The Economist is developing the same problem.Report
Maybe they should spend time making the main sites worth going to and have actual accessible content there, otherwise the bloggers’s free content (which is also where you can read all their writers unfiltered thoughts about basically everything rather than their reading basically the same thoughts as they appear filtered through the conventions of mainstream long-form article writing) is essentially just competing for clicks with what they want to sell. What do they think is going to happen if they basically have a free section and a pay section?Report
Actually that’s not fair. If you actually read him he never said Trig wasn’t Palin’s. In fact he published a letter from a doctor who said it would be almost biologically impossible for her daughter to have had Trig AND get pregnant again so quickly. All Sullivan asked for was full disclosure of all the Presidential candidates medical records. It was Palin who exploited this into her usual victimization schtick. The post-election record only serves to support that fact as Palin’s chief skill seems to be discovering more and more villians who have victimized her in some way.Report
“All Sullivan asked for was full disclosure of all the Presidential candidates medical records.”
No, no. Sullivan wrote all sorts of mindless speculations about Trig and challenged Palin to refute them. Like that’s her job or would have satisfied him if she did.Report
(1) The Atlantic has gone downhill ever since the untimely death of Michael Kelly.
(2) It would take, at the very least, an electron microscope to detect my interest in the private lives of politicians. Merely seeking a political career is sufficient evidence of a serious character problem. Why bother looking further?Report
D.A. — Word!Report
FWIW IMHO Te-Neishi Coates has one of the absolutely best blogs anywhere. Not only his stuff but the level of discussion in the comments, on very touchy subjects, is a model for how it should be done.Report
Maybe so, but when you let the Trig stuff through you’re not even trying to keep up appearances.Report