Posts by Jolisa
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Oh geez, hold the front page and be careful what you wish for, Giovanni. My long-suffering partner just walked into a door (upstairs, in a darkened room, after beating, er, putting the children to bed, while I was downstairs and nowhere near him). Honest. I'm icing his bruised brow for him right now!
(BTW, he will confirm that when he first told me of the Palin-baby-coverup rumour, I shut him down immediately and forcibly - I believe I used the words "hateful and scurrilous and entirely predictable sexist demonizing bullshit and I don't want to know about it" or something along those lines. And then, I read the links and became thoroughly agnostic on the subject.)
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I'd also love to hear Gov Palin say something like "OK, fine, here's Trig's birth certificate, and you know what? When I got on that plane knowing that I was in pre-labour, I thought I knew better than all the doctors and midwives in the world. Fortunately, it all worked out just fine in my case, but nonetheless I risked my unborn child's life and welfare (not to mention the chance of the plane's crew having to make an unscheduled stop on my behalf), and I sincerely wish that I hadn't. Women of America: when it comes to your pregnant ladybits, do as I say and not as I do."
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Otherwise, tell you what: let's start a rumour right here that Jolisa Gracewood and Giovanni Tiso beat their respective children. It's just as substantiated. Would it be newsworthy, in their circles at least? Well, yes, I believe so, they pride themselves on being good parents. But where's your evidence? I don't have any evidence as such, but it could be true. Shit, anything could be true. And it's out there now, so let's discuss it.
Yeah but no but. I could buy that analogy if: we had just been nominated out of nowhere to be Helen Clark or John Key's second hand person, and if, say, hypothetically speaking, our children had been seen covered in bruises, which it turned out they'd sustained a long way from home, but we flew home anyway, despite the fact that they were bleeding and in need of medical attention (but luckily the airplane staff didn't notice and we didn't tell them), then we changed planes en route, drove past a major hospital, and eventually had the injuries dealt with by our favourite small town hospital ... and then we acted all shocked and surprised when a few earnest bloggers and then the press got a whiff of it and started asking questions, and answered those questions with "Well lookie! They broke their leg yesterday falling out of bed so, uh, yup, no story here!"
I do understand your repulsion -- but in this case the web is not an echo chamber, it's an incomplete library. There was smoke, a fire has been found, and it's still not clear that it's the only one. People aren't making this up out of whole cloth; they're trying to make sense of the evidence already in hand.
That said, I think Rebecca Traister walks the line beautifully in this piece. On the one hand, yes, it's vile and icky that we're suddenly zooming in on reproduction, rather than all the other concrete things that make this person a non-viable candidate; reducing the only woman in the race to the sum of her (and her daughter's) private parts. On the other hand:
(Study questions: Why, in refuting those original rumors, did Palin present as evidence the news that her daughter was pregnant, rather than simply handing over hospital documents and a birth certificate for Trig? Answer: It's a mystery! Why did she get on a long plane ride to Alaska after her water broke a month early in Texas? Answer: It's a mystery! Why was her staff surprised to learn that the governor was pregnant one month before she gave birth? Answer: It's a mystery!)
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Fuck. Could we lay off this crap, pretty please?
If only I were sure it was crap. It seems as plausible to me as the alternatives, or did I just have a more gothic Catholic secrets and lies childhood than most?
If it can happen to Britney, it can happen to anyone.
Sure, but Bristol Palin is no more her mother's keeper than Chelsea Clinton is (or was) her parents.
Of course not. Still not a good look for a vocal proponent of abstinence-only sex education.
And one thing I would give the Bill and Hill Circus all credit for is that they came across as genuinely wanting to keep their child out of the public eye as much as decently possible.
Who doesn't? So again, another reason to question the judgement of a person who accepted the job offer while knowing she had a few surprises up her sleeve that would inevitably involve a huge media focus on her children.
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It's quite a relief to see you say so. I've been scorned as the scum of the earth on the other thread for suggesting her actions were odd and risky.
I'm so dense I didn't notice there was another thread. Just heading over to check it out!
How this one plays out is going to be genuinely interesting.
Absolutely. First reports from the Republican convention suggest a wave of "oh my gods" followed by professions of warmth and understanding and "it could happen to anybody"s.
But here's the other thing: if Bristol is "about five months pregnant" -- which is to say, 16 weeks or so, given the oddities of dating the beginning of a pregnancy -- then the original rumour is not at all disproven. Especially if she was not allowed to breastfeed the first baby: fertility can come back very quickly, and I'm sure we all know at least one set of Irish twins...
Other observations encountered online today: that the speedy flight home was because the baby had already arrived (which is why he's not mentioned on the hospital website). That they had lined up an adoption which fell through when he was prenatally diagnosed, hence the charade. And lots of other stuff, some of it completely scurrilous, but much of it totally possible. It's not an uncommon approach (hiding a teen pregnancy by claiming the mother has had a late baby - see Jack Nicholson, Ted Bundy, and countless non-famous people).
My partner's charitable take on the flight back from Texas is that Palin was exaggerating, perhaps unconsciously, to prove what a hard-arse she is. "Oh yah, I totally flew 8 hours while in labour, that's how tough we are up here in Alaska." That's a possibility I hadn't considered, and a perfectly plausible one.
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See also this comment on the NY Times article from someone aptly called "huh?":
To counter the rumor that the anti-choice, pro-abstinence VP nominee’s teenage daughter had sex and a baby out of wedlock, they release the news that her teenage daughter had sex and is going to have a baby out of wedlock
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Well, hello. So Bristol is not the mother of little Trig, because she's currently 5 months pregnant with her own baby.
Nothing wrong with teen pregnancy, but ouch! Not a great look for a staunch proponent of abstinence-only sex education!
So will Palin stand down, or will she brazen this one out??
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Here's more photoshop-truthiness about Palin. For the lolz, of course.
Whatever the truth of the matter, that's genius for so many reasons. Then there's this decision tree.
It would help to make more sense of this if we knew a bit more about her other labours. Did they take days and days? In which case, she might be forgiven for assuming she was in for another leisurely labour with baby #5 and acting accordingly. But once your waters break, you can go from no discernible labour to delivery in less than an hour, and she must have known she was taking a major risk.
The eyebrow-raising timeline -- delivering the speech, getting on a plane for 6 hours, and then on another plane for an hour or so, and then driving for yet another hour past one major hospital to get to the smaller one where she ultimately delivered (or met) the baby -- is what, I think, is making the conspiracy scenario seem so plausible.
Because otherwise you've got someone who is blithely prepared to give birth to a premature special needs child on a commercial airliner. Which raises questions about her judgement under pressure... or makes her the most fervent home(state)birther I've ever heard of! (Plus, cervix of steel, yo!)
Perhaps, too, the conspiracy chatter is a way of venting some diffuse cultural anxiety (from all quarters, fundies to feminists) about women going back to work (and what work!) so soon after birth? Is it somehow more comforting to think that she's misguidedly protecting her daughter from social opprobrium, than that she's out there training for the presidency from scratch, in public, on broken sleep, while pumping breastmilk round the clock for her nursing infant, y'know?
(I'm not saying she shouldn't, I'm just saying, I know I couldn't! And I doubt many new fathers would make a decent fist of it either.)
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this woman ticks so many boxes it's like she was grown in a lab.
(Except I imagine that she is totally against growing people in labs.)
Heh heh. No doubt. Unfortunately, she's white, which was an oversight on the part of the laboratory, but the 1/8 Inuit husband is probably worth a tick.
I'm grooving on her kids' names (Trig! Track! Willow! Piper!), except for poor Bristol (a girl, of course) who will never be able to enjoy that working holiday in the UK.
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Or is this some really complicated judo move, an implicit rebuke: is the McCain campaign saying "So you reckon Obama is the *only* shiny, idealistic, inexperienced but enthusiastic, totally mediagenic 40-something out there who could actually make a damn fine President, given half the chance? Wanna bet?"
Are they that clever?
On the one hand, she's Harriet Miers. On the other, potentially the amazing Mrs Pritchard... especially given how many of his heartbeats McCain has already used up.