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In response to previous Internet rumors that Bristol Palin, Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's daughter, was actually the mother of Trig Palin, Sarah Palin's youngest son, Gov. Palin has announced to the media today that her 17-year-old daughter Bristol is currently five months pregnant, making impossible the charges that she is actually Trig's mother. My question is this: Why does it matter?
This is certain to be one of the high-profile, juicy political scandal stories of the week, and possibly the entire remainder of the presidential campaign, sure to be used by certain unsavory members of the Left to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Gov. Palin's "traditional values"-based campaign. But what relevance does this actually have to the presidential campaign?
Let's be clear on a couple of things. First of all, Bristol Palin is not a politician. She is not currently running for office, on the national level or otherwise. Secondly, Bristol is a mere seventeen years old. She is a minor by nearly every legal definition in all fifty states. She is a high school student, probably with lots of friends and even a Myspace page. I can only imagine how emotionally damaging it must be for her to be thrust into the forefront of this campaign, and thus the national spotlight, with a news story so intensely personal and so utterly not the business of the voters of the United States.
What's perhaps even worse is that Gov. Palin has been quick to tell the press that her daughter will marry the father of her unborn child. Before today's announcement, did Bristol actually have any such intentions? What if her relationship with this young man is not the best? What if it's great now, but things go south later on down the road, as is so painfully commonplace to relationships in her age group? What if her pregnancy was the result of a simple one-night stand gone wrong? None of the answers to any of these questions are any of America's business. They should be solely the concern of Bristol and her family. But now, in the wake of Internet rumors turned into a buzzing political scandal, her mother has, for all intents and purposes, prematurely committed her to a marriage from a national soap box.
It's often been observed that humans have a peculiar tendency to care about the personal lives of people whose personal lives bear little or no practical relevance to their own. From celebrity gossip to the adulterous affairs and sexual orientation of political officials, we ooh and ahh and gawk and celebrate and grieve and scrunch up our noses in indignation at the matters of others which have no actual effect on our own lives, often at the expense of those issues which do. Today, that odd fascination has crossed a major line. Bristol Palin, daughter or not of a vice presidential candidate, is a teenage girl who deserves to live her private life in privacy, without having her dirty laundry aired by every major national news network in the country for the world to judge and scrutinize. Bristol Palin's pregnancy is none of your business, America. I am ashamed of the outlets on "my" side of the political fence who have attempted to exploit her for political gain, and I am disgusted in the McCain campaign for entertaining these vile tactics with a response.
Addendum: In the spirit of this article, the conversation here should remain confined to the relevance of said events, and should not be extended to discussing the events themselves. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to allow my column to be a forum for continuing the propagation of this issue as a political tool, so anyone who wants to actually discuss Sarah and Bristol's personal lives should go elsewhere. Any comments to that effect on this article will be deleted.
