The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Yet another Sarah Palin/SNL connection? Plus: Donnie Wahlberg stays classy, the season gets its first cancellation, and a 90210/Gossip Girl crossover?
Screengrab by Various Today in Hooksexup's film blog: The 25 greatest war movies of all time.
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posted 9/4/2008
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For liberals, sexual experimentation in one's twenties is almost as strong an opposing ideology. Many children of liberal parents are encouraged to experience the world, travel, meet people and, presumably, "get it out of their system." While many liberal parents would be nervous if their child got married while still a teenager, many conservative parents (like Albert Mohler) might see this as a stroke of luck that would keep their child from engaging in a period of young-adulthood debauchery.
"Fortunately, Bristol is following her mother and father's example of choosing life in the midst of a difficult situation," said Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in a statement, referring to reports that Sarah Palin and her husband also got married four weeks after Sarah got pregnant. "We are committed to praying for Bristol and her husband-to-be."
And: "We're all sinners," Mathew Staver, dean of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University School of Law, told CNN. "We all make mistakes. Certainly, the ideal is not to get pregnant out of wedlock. But [Bristol Palin] made the right decision after her mistake."
Many conservative parents might see this as a stroke of luck that would keep their child from engaging in a period of young-adulthood debauchery.
Of course, many members of the Christian right will defend Palin to the end solely because that's how badly they want their guy (or at least, not the other guys' guy) to win. And to be utterly fair, some sincere compassion is surely at play here, both for Bristol and her parents. We are all sinners, indeed. (Though can you imagine the reaction if a Clinton or an Obama daughter found themselves in a similar situation?) In fact, it's worth noting that, aside from the fact that she was from Kansas and he was from Kenya, even Barack Obama's mother and father's situation wasn't unusual for its time: In 1960, Obama's mom, Ann Dunham, got pregnant at eighteen and then married Obama's father several months later. Their parents objected to the marriage, not because of her age, as Obama points out in his autobiography, but because they were a mixed-race couple.
Plus, Bristol's pregnancy obviously offers just the distraction the GOP needs from Sarah Palin herself: her gross lack of qualifications, insulting self-linkage to Hillary Clinton, and, possibly, questionable ethics. All of a sudden, Todd "First Dude" Palin's worst offense is not his apparent involvement in the trooper-firing scandal, it's skipping the local Purity Ball. Luckily, Bristol's decision to dutifully marry her boyfriend is making up for it.
All in all, Bristol and her baby are a gift to McCain, who needs the Christian right to energize his malaise-stricken campaign. It's a gift with a card signed by Karl Rove himself, who is surely sitting in a giant armchair somewhere right now, stroking a purring white cat. "Wait it out," he breathes, lip curled. "Just wait it out."
He won't have to wait long. Under the headline "McCain's Effort to Woo Conservatives Is Paying Off," yesterday's New York Times reports that even James Dobson, who once thundered that he would not vote for McCain "under any circumstances," is now considering a flip-flop. Question: Would he be as enamored with Bristol if she'd never gotten pregnant in the first place, and instead spent her twenties broadening her sexual horizons? Not a chance.n°
Lynn Harris is author of the satirical novel Death By Chick Lit and its prequel, Miss Media, as well as co-creator of the award-winning website BreakupGirl.net. A regular contributor to Glamour, Salon, The New York Times, Babble and many others, she also writes the "Rabbi's Wife" column for Nextbook.org. Visit her at LynnHarris.net.
