August 31, 2008 | Filed under: politics are only fun when there's a sex-scandal, un-vlogged
(embedding YouTube videos wreaks havoc on my layout. Don’t know why; posts look fine in the preview but then when I publish it gets crazed. So click here for an interesting video where Sarah Palin discusses motherhood and politics without mentioning that she’s 7 months pregnant herself…all while sitting cross-legged…and leaning forward.)
…or BabyGate, if you prefer. Or WaterBreakGate, which is my new favorite. I wish I’d thought of it.
I don’t read People or Us or even OK (tagline “We’re 50 cents cheaper than People!”). Neither Perez Hilton nor TMZ can be found in my feedreader. I don’t watch Entertainment Tonight or any morning “news” programs. My point being: I don’t “do” gossip. I just don’t care. But do I ever loooooove me some pregnancy gossip! And this Sarah Palin thing is just too juicy to ignore. This is the most over-the-top uterine news story since Little Baby Spears birthed yet another Little Baby Spears. To be perfectly honest, I’m obsessed. I’m an out-of-control internet gossip-mongering fool over this. The Palin pregnancy rumor has even crept into my subconscious. I dreamt last night that I went to work and my charge nurse said “Hurry up and get to room 34; you have to have Sarah Palin’s baby” and I looked down and my tummy and said “but Miz Nelson, I’m not pregnant!” and she said “well neither is she; now get to work!”.
The remainder of the dream took place in the organic produce aisle of Super Wal-Mart for reasons I cannot explain.
You’ve heard the rumor, yes? Need I explain it? Well, for those who don’t know, rumor has it that Sarah Palin’s fifth child Trig, may not actually be hers, but rather the son of her 16-year old daughter, Bristol.
Ummmm…whoa!
Now, right off the bat I’d like to say that I’m no fan of Sarah Palin or John McCain or republicans in general, I’m pro-choice to the point of near violence, I like polar bears and I was against that stupid bridge. Clearly Palin’s not my kind of people. Not even a wee little bit, so for me she’s an easy gossip target. What we have here is either
a) a massive cover-up scandal of World Weekly News-type type proportions OR
b) a demonstration by Sarah Palin that she is a whackadoo whose evangelical tendencies lean so very far to the right that that she made a medically lousy (LOUSY) judgment call and risked her baby’s health as well as her own because why should she care she’s okay with meeting her maker, anyways.
Either way, I don’t want her to even visit the White House with a tour group much less be next in line for the throne.
The photos and video that I’ve seen (compiled nicely here) blow my mind. She just doesn’t look all that pregnant, particularly when compared to photos of her during a previous pregnancy. I will admit that in the pictures where she’s supposedly quite far along she really doesn’t seem to be, but she is dressed in the manner of a woman who is trying to hide a pregnancy, I’ll giver her that. Long scarves, big jackets. This could, however, simply be her unbelievably crappy conservative fashion sense. Tough call.
But that picture of her in that brown track jacket with a sideways view is a real stumper. Seven months? Not! I’d say “eh, small baby” except that we know it wasn’t that small a baby. 6 lbs 2 oz is perfectly fine for a full-term kid. For an 8-monther? It’s like a bonus. 6lbs 2oz is not a teeny-weenie-where’s-your-belly-sized baby.
I have a terrible time buying that her water broke a month early and she flew back home then drove to a regional hospital instead of staying in Anchorage. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m a really open-minded gal when it comes to childbirth and I know in my heart that we (the American Medical “we”) over-intervene in birth more far often than we should, but if a woman of advanced maternal age with a known Down Syndrome baby who broke her water a month early tried to either leave the hospital or called a doc and refused to come in and said “I’m getting on a plane so I can deliver in a hospital that delivers 10 babies a month!” [Update: Mat-Su Regional’s website is down! ! repeat! Mat-su Regional’s website is down!] you’d better believe that child services would have been called whether she was a clinic patient from the ghetto or some high-powered hoo-ha. That shows incredibly poor judgment regarding the health of your kid and at both hospitals where I’ve worked that kind of behavior would warrant a psych consult. Seriously. I’m no medical expert, I’m just a lowly staff nurse, but here’s a list of the risks she was taking just off the top of my head. There may be even more be more due to the baby’s Down Syndrome that I don’t know about.
1) 5th baby, FTW! So many hours of travel was risky. Them 5th babies have a funny way of sliding out by themselves. She could have delivered on the plane easily and let’s remember: no one on the flight was told in advance that she was pregnant. Why? Gee, I don’t know. Most airlines have rules regarding pregnant passengers in their third trimester, Alaska Air does not.
2) Around half of babies born with trisomy 21 have heart defects, potentially causing a problem adjusting to life on outside. A particular problem if your are born on on a freakin’ plane where no one is expecting you to appear so very suddenly.
3) Breaking your water and sitting around not doing anything about it puts you at risk for infection and you’ll need antibiotics. The kind not found on airplanes. The kind of infection that maybe a preemie baby with Downs Syndrome can’t handle well at all. Palin claims that she ruptured 4/17 at 4AM Texas-time, and delivered 4/18 6:30AM Alaska time. PPROM (preterm premature rupture of membranes) is nogoodskees for babies.
4) Forgetting about the baby a sec, let’s look at the risks to her. Having a 5th baby wreaks hell on your bod. Every time you have a baby your uterus can get, for lack of a better term, really freakin’ tired. After delivering babies over the years a tired uterus may not “clamp down” as quickly as it used to after the baby is born (it’s a muscle remember? And extremely vascular: no clamping = postpartum hemorrhage). They don’t keep pre-packed units of O-negative on planes, last I checked. Actually, Palin’s risk of hemorrhage and *not* the risk to the baby was the first thing I thought of when I heard “she was in labor with her fifth and got on a plane”, that’s how scary that is to me. Very scary.
To add to the Giant Steaming Pile of Weird, when she finally got to the hospital she was supposedly induced (augmented, technically since she was already in early labor). This isn’t completely suspicious, but it is a wee odd since she was a month early. You just don’t go inducing preemies without a good medical reason…so what was it?
Then there’s poor Bristol. Oh man, I feel badly for this kid…but not so badly that I’m not going to talk about her.
I could totally believe that the family photo where her daughter is looking a little…well…pregnant (for lack of a better explanation, compared to looking like this in December) and that her “bump” could just be a little teen-cheeseburger tummy except for the fact that she was pulled out of school for months supposedly suffering from a raging case of mono. All the speculation regarding Bristol being out of school seems to come from student sources. Where are the school records for this? Attendance records aren’t private, so where are they? Was that girl was whisked away and kept somewhere? At home? At a nunnery? Canada? Where are her friends? Where are the yappy teenaged girls-on-the-sidewalk in front of the school just waiting to be swooped upon by the press? I don’t have a tv, did I miss it? Were there interviews of gum-smacking teens and I missed them? Let’s be frank: there’s only one reason a 16 year old gets taken out of school for five months and it ain’t mono.
What freaks me out about this whole thing is that if it’s all true, Sarah Palin’s only motivations for creating this cover-up are political. She’s worried about losing her evangelical base, she’s worried about how she is perceived, worried about her future. She simply cannot have a pregnant teenage daughter. She just can’t. Not only that, but her having a baby with Down Syndrome is a not-so-subtle nod to her anti-choice stance. Okay, she didn’t abort, ten heaven-points for her, but I guess that’s not enough points to keep her career afloat. Yes, I know how callous that sounded. There’s nothing creepier to me than a mother who messes with her kids lives to save her own reputation (when I did have a tv I used to watch a lot of LifetimeTV movies, so I feel like this happens all the time). I can just hear it now: “Bristol how could you do this to me!”. Drama, crying, plates are thrown, doors are slammed, wackiness ensues. Just a typical day at the governor’s mansion.
Let’s assume that Trig is indeed Sarah Palin’s child: for her to not even divulge that she was pregnant until seven months is really quite wango. It smacks of a last minute cover-up. She’d already had four kids, she’s a SuperProudMegaMommy (action figure pending), so why wait until March to mention it? Because she didn’t know? But she did know. Since December. Did they need to buy time to sort out the particulars? Did they needed to get their story straight?
I love this crap. It’s just too, too tasty. I eat it up. It’s like candy corn to me. It’s a cruel rumor for sure; to accuse a woman of not being her kid’s mom is terribly vicious. But you know what?
It really could be true. Really.
And anyway I’m so afraid of this woman being vice-president that I want this rumor to get as out of control as humanly possible. Dude: I say throw a kidnapping angle in there. The story is already at nuclear LifetimeTV levels! We’re at LifeCon 4, people, let’s go whole hog!! How about some incest? Maybe an illegal immigrant. Please let it be the baby of an illegal Chinese fisherman.
Bring it.
Let’s get it on. It’s all in good, clean fun. Or at least just plain fun.
(especially because Sarah Palin abuses her political power as much as the next schmuck)
A thousand thanks to Michael Verdi and Jen Simmons for pointing me toward neat-o Palin links and for feeding my hungry Gossip Beast!
August 31, 2008
@ 11:35 pm
The other theory though seems more plausible. That Trig is Gov. Palin’s baby, and Bristol is actually pregnant (and married to her high school sweetheart) right now. Photos of her with wedding ring on her finger. I think I got those from the long, horrible, trainwreck of a comment threat over here:
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/08/30/off-to-the-land-of-palin/
I share your inability to look away from this.
Mainly, I wish people would lighten up on the poor kid. The micro analysis of her body is over the top.
Clearly this weekend, the blogging wave began to build and crest… and is unstoppable. Mainstream media has yet to figure out what the hell to say, but they won’t be able to ignore it for long.
I hope the Democrats won’t ride on it or even comment, they should stick to their positive and on-topic messages, and let nature, gossip, and the blogosphere take its horrible course.
August 31, 2008
@ 11:49 pm
SO FULL OF WIN.
That would be you.
September 1, 2008
@ 12:06 am
Oh, Liz! Liz! Thank you for that link! The plot thickens indeed! Love that theory! Very sensible. My favorite! The missing MySpace page
Oh pleez don’t let the Dems say one word about this. Not one wee peep! Leave the peeping to us.
September 1, 2008
@ 12:32 am
Great write up. I was hungry for a good dose of Palin gossip.
Hey, I think I can help you with y’r embeds. I’ll write you an email.
September 1, 2008
@ 7:16 am
Surely *someone* in the podunk hospital in Alaska would be willing to spill the beans if someone waved enough cash at them.
September 1, 2008
@ 8:24 am
This is a no-win situation for Gov. Palin. Assuming she’s telling the truth and Trig is her son, she made dramatically rotten decisions regarding the health and wellbeing of her unborn child. If he’s her grandson, well…
If you believe that Trig is Bristol’s kid, the only scenario I can think of that makes any sense on the seven-month announcement is that the family originally intended to put Bristol’s baby up for adoption, but learned late in the pregnancy that he was likely going to be born with Down Syndrome. Knowing that a child with a disability would not be easily adoptable, they made the call to say that the governor was pregnant. Otherwise, why not announce at the 4-month mark, and start wearing a pillow or baggy clothes then?
If he is Bristol’s son, WHERE’S THE DAD?
September 1, 2008
@ 8:31 am
well,I certainly won’t speak for any other Bible thumpers out there, but for me, if, and it’s a big if, if she lied and the baby is really her daughters, that is just stupid, I would say most christians would be less likely to vote for her becuase of it. Not that I was voting for McCain anyway…but I digress, anyway, I doubt it is her daughter’s and she is covering…young girls get pregnant out of marriage, it happens, you know that all to well, I know that all to well…..I may like for things to be different, but they’re not….I’ve accepted that…and if I can I am sure that Mrs Palin would have too…on our sliding christian scale, babies out of wedlock is pretty low..
August 3, 2010
@ 10:34 am
the best wedding ring is of course the very expensive diamond ring.-,
September 29, 2010
@ 12:46 pm
the best wedding ring that you could possibly give your wife is always a diamond ring~”-
October 13, 2010
@ 4:08 am
the best wedding ring is of course diamond studded, diamonds are expensive but they are the best:;;