Did anyone happen to see GMA yesterday (along with every other subsequent celeb-gossip/news format show)? Did anyone happen to notice Bristol Palin advocating (not very successfully) abstinence? While this offers a wide variety of WTF moments, like the fact that the 17 yr. old high school junior is the un-wed, single mother of a baby after being in an "abstinence" only household (WTF?), or the fact that the longer the Palins are in the spotlight for anything you just have to stop what you're doing and say WTF? because you find out what redneck morons they really are. Or are you saying WTF? because you realize that un-wed baby mama Bristol is just a political puppet for her mother.
Yesterday, during his interview, GMA's Chris Cuomo read Bristol some of the unflattering criticism of her mother. Fox and Friends even had something about Sarah "pimping" Bristol out, and how this was just a way to get a buck (which the "pit bull with lisp stick" must need as Sarah! has been named in several civil suits). Most of this is valid criticism. In the post-Britney- meltdown- day and age we have to question the motive of parents who put their children in the spotlight to earn a buck or spin a message. All of America knows that Sarah! is all about Spin!
What I find most alarming, however, is that so few people are talking about what was actually appalling with all of the interviews and talkies Miss Palin the Younger did. After a full day on TV, to share a "message," Bristol actually said very little. When queried about how she would convince young people not to have sex or how she would answer the argument that she herself wasn't abstinent, she just said that being abstinent was the only option. The only response Bristol did have is that having a kid, while being a kid, was just hard work.
Even if I had wanted to get someone pregnant in high school, this sage advice wouldn't have been enough to keep me from doing it. Even worse, while Bristol is just telling folks to "trust her" she never once tried to build empathy with young girls who might be in a similar situation by telling them her story. It was all very much "Do as I say, not as I do". How is this being a true advocate?
Also conspicuously ignored is the fact that unlike other girls who become pregnant, Bristol Palin has many advantages. She has a large family to support her, a family that can more than likely hire a nanny or afford child care so that she can go to school (and eventual hope of going to college which would allow her the opportunity to actually support her child), and she also has name recognition so that she can land these little income earning opportunities.
In parroting (there was no discussion or even acknowledgement of any personal question), err...touting the no sex ever before marriage party line, Bristol is also foolishly ignoring not only the reality that abstinence only education doesn't really work, she is also ignoring the reality of those feelings and wants (that she herself felt) and ignoring the fact that when you don't know anything about having sex, you won't also know about the fact that putting on a condom might not only keep you from becoming a teen parent, it may just keep you from dying.
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