The saga of Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston is back in the news. Not only is the wedding ioff, the lid is also off the sordid details of the whole affair. Levi says Governor Palin knew he was having a sexual relationship with her daughter. For her part, Governor Palin no longer says that Levi is a fine young man, now he is a bad father who doesn’t care about the interests of his baby. I suspect that I am not alone in feeling that this is private business that has no place in the public debate, but I might be over influenced by the rules of a bygone day.
I was raised in a 1950's, small, middle class, New England town. That world was only somewhat more forgiving than the Boston of Hester Prynne, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictional character, who was forced to where a scarlet “A” on her chest as a mark of shame for conceiving a baby in an adulterous affair. In my town, if a girl got pregnant, she was immediately expelled from school. As a young man, I speculated that the leaders of the town feared that pregnancy was a contagious disease. There was no similar punishment for the young father, but his “reputation” was lost as a result of his transgression and refusal to “do right” by the girl and marry her.
This was the framework from which I watched in bemused disbelief last summer as John McCain left the Republican National Convention and traveled to the airport to greet the arrival of Levi Johnston, the teenage man who had impregnated Bristol Palin, his vice-presidential nominee’s 17-year-old daughter. I felt a little old fashioned as I suggested to my teenage son and daughter that in my opinion young Mr. Johnston had not done anything to deserve an official welcome by a Presidential candidate. It seemed to me that there had to be some happy medium between the hard world that I grew up in and greeting a young man who had acted irresponsibly as a returning war hero.
During the early days of her national campaign, Sarah Palin and her allies lashed out at the press for its coverage of these family issues, but in fairness it seemed to me the main stream press showed considerable restraint. It was Governor Palin who decided to parade her pregnant daughter throughout the campaign and it was the Governor who made Bristol’s decision to bring her baby to term a campaign issue. The blame for Bristol’s story being in the national press belongs squarely with Sarah and Todd Palin.
When John McCain called Sarah Palin and asked her to be his running mate, she knew her daughter was pregnant. Palin knew if she accepted the call, her daughter’s story would be known by everybody in America. Sarah Palin is a young woman, couldn’t she have postponed her national ambition until her daughter got through this ordeal. My wife and I have both run for office and understand the power of political fever. But I would hope that had I been in Governor Palin’s position I would have had the character to put my daughter’s interest first and say no. I have no doubt that would have been my wife’s judgement.
Politicians always claim that they seek higher office only after consulting with their family. In reality that usually boils down to seeing what price your spouse will put on being supportive of your effort. However, in Sarah Palin’s case the decision to run was a moment of moral testing and she failed. I realize I was raised in a different time. Maybe my idea that babies are best conceived inside a marriage is dated, but it should never be in fashion for parents to put their ambition ahead of doing real harm to their child. The current public feud between Bristol and Levi might not have been foreordained, but making young Bristol’s private travails a national spectacle was shockingly cruel. I suspect this demonstrates just how tough Sarah is but from now on please spare us the pretense of putting family first.
Machiavelli’s Discourses 3.6, CWO: 444).Forlì conspirators killed Count Girolamo their ruler and captured his wife and small children. These conspirators knew they were not secure if they were not masters of the fortress, but the castellan was unwilling to surrender it. Then Madonna Caterina (for so the Countess was called) promised that if the conspirators would let her enter the fortress, she would have it surrendered to them; they might keep her children as hostages. With that promise, they let her enter. As soon as she was inside, she reproached them from the wall with the death of her husband, threatening them with every kind of revenge. And to show that she did not care about her children, she uncovered to them her genital members [le membra genitali], saying she still had means for producing more children”
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AuthorPhil Merrill lives in Appleton, Maine. ArchivesCategories |