This was hard to believe. I had to check twice to make sure it was really Time magazine and not some clever decoy, you know, like “crisis pregnancy” centers like to pull when they set up facilities next to a Planned Parenthood clinic and call themselves something like “The Planning for Parenthood Center” to fake legitimacy and trick people who are looking for actual reproductive health care into their clutches. But no, it is Time magazine, and the guy who is writing the article is named Nathan Thornburgh. Actually, I was so underwhelmed by this article that I decided to do a quick search on this guy’s name to see what else he might’ve written out there, and apparently, this is but a second of a series of articles he has produced about visiting Alaska in the light of the Palin veep announcement. The other one, entitled “Where Palin Made Her Name,” opens with the following gem:
It’s Friday night, and there have got to be 500 people packed into the Sluice Box, a beer-soaked clapboard honky-tonk at the Alaska State Fair – the state’s biggest event all year – just down the highway from Governor Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla. The legendary Hobo Jim, Alaska’s official state balladeer, the guy who has opened sessions of the legislature with a song, is onstage, working blue.
“Here’s to the girl from the great Northwest,” he sings, “with tits as hard as a hornet’s nest.” The crowd whistles its approval.
For the record, he’s not singing about Palin, though the curvature and comeliness of McCain’s surprise vice-presidential nominee pick are brought up by just about everyone here, man and woman, in a way that would make lower-48 liberals and feminists cringe.
Mmm…you know, there are certain things that people who don’t like a certain other set of people say that are red flags cluing one in on the fact that that person, indeed, does not like them. The above is a great example of that. It’s interesting that some journalists appear to believe that the spirit of the supposed ideal of journalistic neutrality is fulfilled by passive-aggression–frankly, I’d prefer that they just openly said fuck the whole ideal! and engaged in outright aggression. It’d leave less of a greasy aftertaste.
At any rate, it’s a strange article. He begins by stating that he thinks that Sarah Palin’s underaged daughter’s pregnancy is nobody’s business but her and her family’s, which makes the fact that he’s writing an article about said pregnancy in a nationally popular magazine rather odd. Would he like us better if we quit reading his article right then in solidarity? He then goes on to describe how they’re all real men in Alaska–hunting is apparently not something they do in any of those other 48 states, you know, the ones occupied by liberals and feminists, and Alaska also has people who’ve lost family members to industrial accidents and that go serve in Iraq, which again sets them quite apart from the 48 Contiguous Pussy States where that shit apparently hardly ever even comes up. The naturally flowing conclusion that he draws from all this is so that really, it is SO not a big deal to be an underaged mother. (You can almost hear him shout Isn’t this REFRESHING, readers??)
Yep, it gets even more unreal than that–don’t believe me? Here ya go:
The fact is, regardless of what you will hear over the next few days, Bristol [Palin]‘s pregnancy is not a legitimate political issue. Sarah Palin is a longterm member of a group called Feminists for Life, which is not opposed to birth control. So you probably can’t tag her for consigning young people to unwanted pregnancies.
Oh, my. You most certainly can, including that of her own daughter, unless you’re trying to stretch reality even further and claim that Bristol Palin is having a planned pregnancy. Let’s see, for instance, what Feminists for Life actually does have to say about contraception:
What is Feminists for Life’s position on contraception?
Feminists for Life’s mission is to address the unmet needs of women who are pregnant or parenting. Preconception issues including abstinence and contraception are outside of our mission.
Erm, but they DO have a stated position on, for instance, assisted suicide, which seems to be a leetle further afield from the topic of pregnancy than contraception is…come on, what’s the REAL reason—?
Some FFL members and supporters support the use of non-abortifacient contraception while others oppose contraception for a variety of reasons
Translated: not all of us have multiple kids, making indelicate questions about our contraceptive status unavoidable if we were to outright oppose it.
FFL is concerned that certain forms of contraception have had adverse health effects on women.
Translated: But if we can find a health link, no matter how dubious, we’re primed and ready to jump on that bandwagon at the slightest moment’s notice!!
But how about Sarah Palin herself?
Q. Will you support the right of parents to opt out their children from curricula, books, classes, or surveys, which parents consider privacy-invading or offensive to their religion or conscience?
Sarah Palin: Yes. Parents should have the ultimate control over what their children are taught.
Q. Will you support funding for abstinence-until-marriage education instead of for explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics, and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?
Sarah Palin: Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.
You know, sometimes it is useful to actually get to see, so CLEARLY illustrated, where the fervent support of the above positions lands the daughters of those who practice said preachery. No theories or opinions here, folks! Real-life consequences of real-life philosophies.
And after all this, here is the conclusion that Nathan Thornburgh says he’s come to:
As for the idea — sure to be floated—that the avowedly anti-abortion Palin may have pressured her poor daughter to ruin her life by carrying an unwanted baby to term, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Is my favorite part of the above sentence the pooh-poohing of the idea that having a baby at age 17 might be quite life-altering in a negative way or that any girl forced to do so is a sarcastically pooor weeeetle thaaaaang, or is it that he thinks that it’s even possible that Bristol Palin was presented with all her choices in a rational and unbiased fashion?
(sigh) I’ll let you know when I figure that out…
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