Vice Squad
Sarah Palin electrifies the Republican base — and the mommy wars.
by Kate Tuttle
September 3, 2008
Is it sexist to question a female candidate's fitness for office based on the kind of mother she is? Do the choices made by parents, from pregnancy to childbirth to sex education for teenagers, have any bearing in the political realm? What are "family values," anyway, and who gets to decide?
From the moment Republican presidential nominee John McCain plucked Alaska Governor and self-described "hockey mom" Sarah Palin from small-state obscurity to place her in the number two slot on the GOP ticket this November, the questions have multiplied like rabbits, leaving pundits and voters alike to wonder just how much, in this election cycle anyway, the personal is political.
Let's start with the rumors. Within twenty-four hours of the Palin announcement last Friday, the Internet was buzzing with speculation that four-month-old Trig Palin, who has Down syndrome, was actually the governor's grandson. The blog equivalents of Woodward and Bernstein linked to photos from both official sites (including some that were later moved, taken down, or re-captioned) and MySpace (including those of a girl calling Bristol her "SIS in law!") to argue that Palin had undertaken a sham pregnancy to cover up for her teenaged daughter Bristol. Given published reports that Palin "simply [didn't] look pregnant" when she announced the pregnancy in March (Trig was born in April), along with a dearth of photos online showing a discernible bump and widespread rumors that Bristol had spent months out of school due to mono, the story sounded both deliciously scandalous and vaguely plausible.
Even those who didn't believe the Trig-as-Bristol's-baby meme found some details of the baby's birth unsettling.
Even those who didn't believe the Trig-as-Bristol's-baby meme found some details of the baby's birth unsettling, what with Palin reportedly boarding an eleven-hour commercial flight home after her water broke in Texas, where she'd delivered a speech, then driving to the tiny regional hospital in Wasilla rather than give birth in Anchorage (despite the baby's high risk status and prematurity). It takes some serious conspiracy-minded thinking to imagine dozens of hospital personnel going along with a baby switcheroo, but any reasonable woman who has had a child might find Palin's choices around Trig's birth questionable at best.
As the Web heated up, the professionals took over. On Monday, the day the GOP convention was set to open — and the day Hurricane Gustav took aim at New Orleans and the Gulf Coast — the Palin campaign made a statement. Seventeen-year-old Bristol, they said, was five months pregnant, expecting in December, and she was planning to marry her boyfriend and make it all official. Presented as part precious miracle, part parental cross-to-bear, the Bristol pregnancy announcement was intended and timed, according to spokesperson Tucker Eskew (the Republican operative who, while working for George W. Bush in 2000, torpedoed McCain's primary bid in South Carolina), to "flush the toilet," a charming political term for releasing all a candidate's negative baggage at once. The family later promised that Bristol's fiancé, Levi Johnston, will be attending the Republican National Convention and presumably appearing with the Palin family when she accepts the nomination Wednesday in St. Paul. That is, if she does accept; as I write, odds-makers calculate a twelve percent likelihood that Palin will drop out as the VP candidate.
In the seventy-two hours since the country's second female Vice Presidential nominee was named, the country has ridden a roller coaster of revelations and assumptions, leaving the complex work of separating rumor from fact, distraction from revelation. In the wake of what seemed like lax vetting from McCain, as Jack Shafter of Slate pointed out, any story about Palin felt like a scoop. And given that McCain's choice seemed calculated to both energize his party's far-right social conservative base and appeal to any remaining disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, any questions raised about Palin's children, pregnancies, pregnant children, etc., were sure to invite scrutiny for sexism and double standards.
©2008 Kate Tuttle and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Kate Tuttle is a writer and editor raising two children just outside Boston. |
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