Is it possible to be both a skeptic and a tin-foil-hatter? Because it seems I combine both in one handy package.
The day after Palin was nominated, I got wind of her wild airplane ride, and then drew my own conclusions that something was stinky – well before I even checked out the Daily Kos post that launched a thousand conspiracies (and is now weirdly deleted!), and days before a friend pointed me toward Andrew Sullivan’s blog, the Daily Dish.
I’m just one Z-list (I prefer “boutique”) blogger, but I think it’s useful to recognize that instead of a bandwagon effect, various individuals independently began to ask apparently unanswerable questions about Palin’s pregnancy, which included more mysteries than the Virgin Mary’s. Now lit brit has added her voice to the skeptics, and she’s got a medium-sized bully pulpit at Cogitamus. Her first post and its followup sparked a rebuttal from Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon. (Much of the following is shamlessly borrowed from my comments there.)
First, why should we care? Well, if Palin lied about her final pregnancy, then she didn’t just hoodwink her immediate family. She took the whole country for a ride. I personally was not on the bus, but those who drank the Kool-Aid believe that Palin is the very embodiment of sacrificial motherhood – never mind that she seems quite content to delegate Trig’s care to others as much as possible. (Yes, I get the urge to delegate, and I’ve done it – most recently to Shaun the Sheep. I just don’t brag about my mothering practices as qualifying me for the presidency.)
I remaining mystified by Palin’s motives for faking a pregnancy. But whatever transpired back in winter 2008, she could puncture the rumors by releasing Trig’s birth certificate, as Obama has done with his own. This has been one of Andrew Sullivan’s core demands, and I agree with him. No, we voters cannot demand every last scrap of health information of our candidates. Convention, however, favors transparency when it comes to the wanna-be “leader of the free world.” Releasing Trig’s records wouldn’t just jibe with standard practice. It would also deflate me and everyone else who aren’t professional, full-time tin-foil-hatters. Most of us are highly educated, skeptical types. In fact, I came to this story precisely through my own skepticism. Give us some plausible evidence, and we’ll happily go back to writing schlock about Transformer Porn.
Before I proceed any further, one point of order: I think we should leave Bristol alone. It’s possible to juggle dates to create a scenario in which she bore two babies in quick succession. However, it fails the Occam’s Razor test. I can’t countenance picking on people who were minors at the time. Anyway, whenever we turn the camera toward Bristol, we’ve tilted it away from Palin herself. That’s not just ethically problematic, it’s also a tactical mistake.
Now, back to the evidence. Those pix from Sarah’s final weeks of pregnancy? There’s a reason why the women kicking up dust about this have primarily been mothers – me, various Alaskan bloggers, and now (on a bigger stage) litbrit. Of course not all women experience pregnancy the same. Of course a few barely show until the final week. Those “late show-ers” are almost invariably bringing their first pregnancy to term. They go on Oprah or they are expelled from their high schools. In any event, they’re not on baby number five. It’s not impossible, but it’s highly implausible to reach the seven-month mark without clearly looking pregnant. This is especially true for fit women. To hell with Palin’s ultra-fit abdominal muscles – if you’re slender, the bump is gonna show more dramatically. (BTW, I’d love to hear from other parents who can confirm or refute my observations.)
I come to this kerfuffle not just as a feminist and mother, but as a scholar with some relevant credentials. I wrote my dissertation on historical experiences of pregnancy, and though I’m not an M.D., I play one pretty well in the archives. I’m drawing on the absurd amount of time I’ve spent immersed medical journals (historical and present), plus my experiences as the mother of two sons. Sure, my experiences are not representative, nor are those of my friends and research “subjects.” However. I’ve collected enough experiences to know that Palin’s are just off the chart.
What most makes me wonder, more than anything, is Sarah’s wild ride. It smacks of gross negligence, which ought not to be a selling point with the pro-life crowd. It doesn’t even fit into her newish mama grizzly narrative. After all, the grizzly ought to protect her young, not eat ‘em … or endanger them by giving birth an hour outside of Anchorage, be it by car or plane.
I’m not gonna rehash my posts on Sarah’s wild ride here, but re-reading them, I’m struck at how it’s truly a tale of miracle and wonder. My old commentary starts here with Palin’s arrogance, moves on to my condemnation of her cowboy judgment, and concludes with a look at the tension between Palin’s actions and reproductive rights. Go read those posts if you’d like to offer up your own comments, because I’m loathe to trot through quotes from them, and yet I think they perfectly illustrate Sarah Palin’s absence from the reality-based world.
Sarah’s wild ride is a narrative that fits pretty well with shooting wolfs from planes. When it comes to establishing love and concern for disabled kids? Hmmm, that doesn’t work quite so well.
Not saying I’ve got the answers. Only that the questions are compelling enough – once you direct the focus away from Bristol – that they’re not merely JAQing off (a charge Amanda repeatedly raised in her post and comments). Even Sully, bless his male-centric soul, sees that Palin is using her cred as sacrificial mother of a “special needs” infant as a basis for her campaign. I don’t think it’s illegitimate to draw on one’s experience as a parent (or other caretaker) in campaigning or governing. I do think it’s bogus to build a campaign on a legend of fearless maternity that is either pathological or a prima facie lie. That’s the point where Sarah Palin’s right to family privacy evaporates into the same ether as her thoughts about Kyrgyzstan. Notice that the argument over privacy does not depend on her anti-choice politics, though they add an especially rich irony. In the end, I have to concur with a female reader of Sullivan’s Daily Dish:
As a woman and a mother I am deeply offended by your reader’s suggestion that Sarah Palin ought to be given privacy about whether she really gave birth to Trig because “women lie about pregnancy/birth/parentage all the time.” Give me a frickin’ break. If a woman lies to her mate about whether she’s carrying his child, that’s between them. But if Sarah Palin lied about giving birth to Trig and then goes around talking about his birth in her book and in speeches, that’s a public matter.
“E]ven if you prove what is likely true – that she is lying – it is neither unique nor crazy.” Well, it may not be unique to fib about a pregnancy, but it is crazy to build an entire political identity on what even this reader thinks is almost certainly a lie. If Palin can blatantly lie about something this big, and keep lying and embellishing the story, then how could we possibly trust her in public office? This is why it matters to voters.
I am sick and tired of this sexist bullshit. She’s a politician. She made it part of her identity. It’s fair game.
Yep. Just imagine if McCain had turned out to fake his war injuries or imprisonment? If Kerry’s medals came from a gumball machine?
Dontcha think the mainstream media would pounce on either of those (fake) stories?
So why is motherhood sacred, even if it’s essentially the greatest credential a candidate boasts in seeking higher office?
Anyone else getting a brimstone whiff of sexism about now?
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Oooh, thanks for writing about this. And thanks for the siren call to me of tinfoil-hattery and cynicism.
Palin’s version of her pregnancy, labor and delivery of Trig was very, very interesting to me. I wrote about it, and was subsequently criticized for writing about it. Interestingly, I was criticized by a member of the birthy crew who I hang out with, since I wasn’t allowing her to “trust her body” when she took that cross country flight, supposedly with broken waters, and disabled fetus.
Not only would a multipara show much earlier, especially a skinny one who likes to wear fitted clothes, but she would also be very likely to go into labor quickly once her waters break. Her narrative of the labor and delivery, if true, show a remarkable selfishness and lack of judgment. It is a story that leaves me incredulous, and from the beginning sounded a lot more like the flight of a mother to her laboring daughter’s side than the flight of a mother to deliver her baby at her remote hometown hospital across the continent.
I agree that it is incredibly sexist to somehow say her motherhood is above criticism. I am really opposed to mommy wars nonsense, but when one runs for office on a platform that includes putting her own motherhood on a pedestal while wanting to restrict the reproductive rights of others, and champions her own choice to bear a disabled child while not being a disability activist, one should be open for analysis of these positions. And, on a basic level, all politicians should be able to defend their claims against scrutiny, regardless of sex, gender, or parental status.
Hmm, for some reason, my Palin blog post link doesn’t seem to work in my post, so I am going to repost it here, for anyone who wants to read it:
http://momstinfoilhat.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/the-palin-stuff/
Great post. Thanks for including it here, since I wasn’t aware of your blog yet back in fall 2008. You and I made very similar arguments about her lack of judgment. I also really appreciated how in the comments section, you distinguish between people’s right to make their own medical decisions, and the fact that some decide to do things that virtually any rational observer would say are reckless. That’s a really important distinction.
Since you and I first posted on Palin’s wild ride, we’ve seen lots of other instances of recklessness. (Bailing on her job as governor would be one example, though I’m pretty sure the people of Alaska are better off as a result.) The argument for preserving her medical privacy has also weakened every time she has spoken out against choice for other women, and every time she has made Trig into a political symbol.
My three, semi-disjointed points:
I was about 7 months pregnant before I looked pregnant. I didn’t gain weight until I was about 5 months along, and I didn’t get past the “She might have just gained some weight and I don’t want to be rude stage” until very late in my pregnancy.
Maybe if I have more kids and feel like I have practice, I might feel differently about the idea of a long flight while in labor with a high risk pregnancy, but I sort of doubt it.
Ultimately, although I feel the situation is decidedly bizarre, I’m not sure I can give Palin enough credit to fabricate something of this magnitude. It takes an incredible flight of ego, arrogance, and control to pull something like faking your 5th pregnancy, and while I think Palin’s got the ego and arrogance down pat, I don’t think she’s got the control and discipline needed to run that kind of a cover-up.
You and Sarah Palin may not have shown much in your first pregnancy. But, as someone who has had two kids and has worked with hundreds of pregnant women – you show much earlier with subsequent pregnancies. I have a friend who is pregnant right now and is in fantastic shape. She just got her yoga certification, in her second trimester. She is showing much more than she did in her first pregnancy.
I find the whole thing really confusing – Trig’s birthday was April 18, and Tripp was born on December 27, 2008, at 7 lbs, 7 oz. I don’t think it was possible that Bristol could have birthed both children. But, the story of Palin’s pregnancy with Trig is still very troublesome and confusing.
A fair point. But I think that the focus on how pregnant she looks from photos where she’s wearing dark colors and long coats and photographed from odd angles is something of a red herring.
It’s the rest of the story that I find inexplicable, regardless of how much weight she gained or didn’t.
I don’t think Bristol needs to be the mother in order for Palin’s apparent lies or exaggerations to be troubling. I think Trig is probably Sarah’s biological son, though I’m not 100% convinced. If he weren’t, all of her posturing about choosing “life” would be revealed as hollow.
More likely, though, either the wild ride didn’t occur as she claims – in which case she’s a liar – or it did, and her judgment is highly suspect.
As for subsequent pregnancies: Your body is sort of like memory foam. It remembers. This is sort of a bummer when you’re three months pregnant and already obviously showing – but a pretty good thing when it’s time to deliver!
I see the usual, lovely use of the term “conspiracy theory” as a pejorative is in full effect at Pandagon. Some nice comments by Amanda Marcotte claiming that it’s OK to “debunk” what Andrew Sullivan’s saying by taking on a strawman and ignoring his actual argument because he’s a “conspiracy theorist”, that there’s no need to provide any evidence to support a known liar’s wild story because any claim it’s false is just a “conspiracy theory”.
(Why should uttering the magic words “conspiracy theory” suddenly absolve you from offering any other reason why the claims should be disbelieved? I’m sure it didn’t used to, that there did actually used to be real sceptics disproving conspiracy theories.)
Also, love the comments falsely equating Chet questioning this to them claiming he’s a rapist or some equally dubious and entirely unfounded claim obviously made up entirely to attack him. There must be a name for this kind of obnoxious, fallacious reasoning – it seems to be quite common.
Yeah, “conspiracy theory” is such a hatchet. The whole discussion at Pandagon was a lost cause, and I think it’s partly because Amanda’s post was pretty superficial. There was a lot of hating on Sullivan, too, which only increased the heat and decreased the light. As for Chet’s comments – he had the better arguments for the most part, but he didn’t help his cause by repeatedly calling everyone else stupid.
The comments have been much more interesting at Cogitamus and at Litbrit’s own place – still lots of disagreement, but much more civility.