Sarah Palin: Shitty Governor, Shittier Mom

Let's review the facts, shall we?

In the few days since McCain announced that the first female name he drew from a hat was Sarah Palin, we have learned that she fired a security director because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law; that she was a director of one of Sen. Stevens' PACs which now has scandalous ties; that she recently supported the bridge to nowhere before changing course, and also secured millions in earmarks for her rinky-dink town; that she supports drilling in ANWR, creationism in schools, and criminalizing abortion even in cases of rape; and, oh yeah, that she may have lied about her pregnancy to cover for her daughter, or at the very least has a pregnant daughter now.

So it's established that she's a pretty shitty choice for McCain's VP nominee. Now onto that other matter.

I don't really care that some people say families should be off-limit. Bullshit. Clinton's affair was made into a national circus event, and Bush's daddy is the reason he's in office. Where Obama takes his family to church is up for debate, and so is the health of John Edwards' wife and the health of their marriage. Family stuff isn't off limits, not any more.

After all, maybe it says something about Sarah Palin, and what kind of figure she would be leading our nation, that she chose to run for vice president knowing that it would expose her daughter to scrutiny she NEVER would have experienced as the daughter of Alaska's governor (in fact, a TIME reporter tells us that most people in their hometown already seemed to know what was going on, but were quiet about it out of respect for the family. It also says something that Palin thinks kids should be taught creationism in school, but not how to put on a condom - indeed, she is for abstinence-only sex "ed," a view generally linked to the principle that families should be responsible for this kind of education. Well, it's a stupid idea to start, and what this incident shows is that Palin wasn't a good enough mother to teach her daughter how not to get knocked up.

Both of these examples demonstrate Palin putting her ideological views and political ambitions against actually protecting her family. Hard to be a fighter for America's families when you can't take care of your own, and hard to be a spokeswoman for an All-Jesus-All-the-Time education policy when you as a parent couldn't keep such an educational system from fucking over your own family. All this is presuming that Bristol is even really pregnant, and this isn't just a cover-up for the larger looming baby scandal (that Palin's fifth child is actually Bristol's) - in which case this new layer of lies will completely sink the GOP ticket.

At least we can take solace in the fact that, when Bristol Palin brings her child into the world, she will be able to teach him or her how Yahweh made the world in 6 days, how a condom is just a funny kind of balloon, and how to be a pretty shitty vice presidential nominee and a really shitty mom. Those are all lessons Gov. Sar-Sar will have taught her well.