So I was watching “The O’Reilly Factor” to see Bill O’Reilly’s interview with Barack Obama when he showed a clip from “The David Letterman Show” airing on Sept. 3. In the clip, Letterman is chatting with Dr. Phil McGraw about Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin and her pregnant teen daughter.
Letterman sets it up like this, “Here’s the first thing that came to my mind–OK, so poor John McCain drops dead in office. He gets elected and drops dead. It’s happened! I think Grover Cleveland dropped dead in office, I don’t know. So now she’s the President and I’m thinking to myself, so she’s the president, fine, but don’t you want your President to have had the presence of mind to have chatted to her teenage kids for five minutes about birth control?”
Dr. Phil responded by saying (this is paraphrased), “Whoa, Dave, just wait until your kid becomes a teenager, and we can contiue this discussion then!” The joke basically bombed, but apparently true wit isn’t one of Letterman’s strong points (guess he has to use the teleprompter). He then asked, “They don’t sell Trojan condoms in Alaska?” Further pressing the issue, Letterman suggests that Sarah Palin probably forced abstinence on her daughter, didn’t teach her about birth control, and that’s why Bristol Palin got pregnant! (Don’t believe me? Go here to watch a clip of the show. The part I’m discussing starts at the 4:38 minute marker and continues on until the end. Yes, over four minutes of this nonsense!)
First of all, I find it offensive that Letterman would suggest that McCain would just drop dead once he gets into office because he is in his early 70’s. Did anyone get a load of his mom, Roberta? The lady is 96 and as spry as a 50 year-old! While I know that Letterman is edgy, that statement seemed rude, even for him.
Second, Letterman assumes that the Palins didn’t teach their children about responsible sex because their daughter is pregnant. Guess what, Dave? Girls who wear condoms (and use birth control) can still get pregnant. Amazing how that works! Besides, even if the Palins didn’t talk to Bristol about sex, I’m sure her public education told her all about the dangers of pre-marital sex. I’m willing to bet she even got to practice putting a condom on a banana.
Third, I can’t believe he blamed “abstinence” for her pregnancy saying that she was less likely to use a condom! Just because she was told to abstain (if she was told to abstain), doesn’t mean she listened. What if her boyfriend kept a condom in his wallet “just in case”? While I’m abstaining from premarital sex, I’m not so naive as to think that people don’t have sex, even if they’re told abstinence is a better choice. And really, what does that have to do with anything, much less Palin’s vice-presidential nomination?
Fourth, why is he trying to drag poor Dr. Phil into his nonsense? At one point, the audience actually went silent, probably because Letterman’s rant was so mean-spirited.
Some rags and media outlets seem to be having a field day with Sarah Palin’s personal life, which is interesting because I don’t recall Joe Biden receiving this much attention. And Obama was raised by a single mom who had Barack when she was 18, didn’t she? Hmm, why does Letterman seem so ignorant of that fact, or does his show exist to simply spew stupidity?
Ignorant or stupid–take your pick.
According to my friend Derek (he’s just a wealth of information lately, isn’t he?), Letterman isn’t the only host that is down on Palin. Apparently Oprah refuses to be “fair and balanced” and interview Palin on her show. Read about it here.
For an insightful post on Sarah Palin and women in leadership, check out Jonalyn Fincher’s “Sarah Palin- Integrating Work and Home.”
She is Beloved 
Bristol Palin is no different than any other young girl who spread her legs and made a baby. Her mother put her out there and you and everybody else might as well ride the tide because it is not going away. There’s probably more that we will hear later about this woman. If it sounds too good to be true, stay tuned. How is the “baby daddy” going to take care of a baby. He’s uneducated at this point and so is she. Marriage may not be the answer for this problem. Granny Sarah might as well get ready to take care of this baby like her own. But again, there’s always “welfare.”
Yeah, but what gives society a right to be so harsh to Bristol or Jamie Lynn or the girl down the street when she does get pregnant? I thought we were above 1950’s thinking about these issues. I can understand why Bristol is in the spotlight–her mom is running for VP and Jamie Lynn’s family is in the media a lot. But how do we react when our teen neighbor tells us that she is pregnant?
See, this is what bothers me. Because Sarah Palin “put her daughter out there for scrutiny” but do we react any different to the pregnant girl down the street?
I find one commenter’s remarks offensive, just because your are young and or living on low income does not make you a ‘bad’ parent! Thousands of young people are successful in raising a family living on the lower end of the economic scale. As for that uncalled for welfare remark, most people do not ‘live’ on welfare, they work hard, work 2 jobs raise well educated law biding children.
Yes, thats what granny’s do, they help their children when they can, thats what made them good parents!
Children sometimes do things we don’t want them to do, but we still love them all the same.
Get off the child’s back, Bristol is not running for public office and here life or life style in really none of your business!
If Bristol Palin is old enough to have a baby she is old enough to face criticism but if she is too young to be having a baby than you should leave her alone.
Either way when using birth control responsibly it is very unlikely you will get pregnant and I think Bristol’s pregnancy is a poor reflection on Sarah Palins parenting skills.
This story is more relevant because Sarah Palin believes in “abstinence only” sex education and probably never taught her daughter about birth control. If your having sex unmarried which 95% of Americans do you may as well use birth control which ambiguous as to whether or not it is a sin.
What shocks me is the lack of empathy people seem to have for Bristol Palin, regardless of who her mother is. So she got pregnant and she’s unmarried, so have a lot of other women throughout history (including Barack Obama’s mom if I’m not mistaken!) No matter what she is still a teenager, unmarried, and pregnant. Instead of condemning her, maybe we should be happy that she didn’t choose to abort her child, that she is taking responsibility for her actions, and that her parents didn’t choose to ship her away to some school in the Netherlands for the next nine months. Where, people, is your compassion?
People are attacking the Palins (and the McCains and the Obamas and the Bidens) as if they have no pasts themselves. I’d rather have a candidate in office that admits to his or her mistakes and has used them as building blocks in character. But, then again, I guess when you’re running for political office, there’s no mercy!
Let’s talk about what really matters–what each candidate plans to do, how he or she will execute it, and judge them on their records. Sure, some of the personal stuff *does* matter, but not like this. More people are upset about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy than about Obama’s wacko former pastor–does anyone realize that Palin is the VP pick?
The trash talk gets old, and at the end of the day Bristol Palin’s pregnancy matters little to the real issue–who will be the next leader of this country?
“If Bristol Palin is old enough to have a baby she is old enough to face criticism but if she is too young to be having a baby than you should leave her alone.
Either way when using birth control responsibly it is very unlikely you will get pregnant and I think Bristol’s pregnancy is a poor reflection on Sarah Palins parenting skills.
This story is more relevant because Sarah Palin believes in “abstinence only” sex education and probably never taught her daughter about birth control. If your having sex unmarried which 95% of Americans do you may as well use birth control which ambiguous as to whether or not it is a sin.”
First of all, Governor Palin does not believe in “abstinence-only” sex education. That is a misconception being fed to the general public by a sensationalist mainstream media eager to sell copies. Governor Palin is against explicit sex education (which teaches masturbation methods and distribution of contraceptives on school property–which does NOT equal opposition to contraception).
Secondly, the ambiguity of birth control as a sin is one thing, but that conveniently overlooks the root issue, which is premarital sex. Is that ambiguous as an act of sin as well?
Thirdly, you and I know next to nothing about what Governor Palin did in fact teach her children about anything, let alone on this most private of issues, so assuming what she did or didn’t teach is only slightly disingenuous.
Fourthly, I do hope that every single parent you ever meet is able to meet your standards of parenting, especially those parents of teenagers who are already old enough in the eyes of the law in some states to get married. Would it have been better to keep her daughter held at home under lock and key?