Maybe this photo has been photo-shopped. Maybe Palin had an anomalous pregnancy that showed far, far less than her previous ones, one that went from close to nothing to a serious bump in two weeks. Maybe the angle in the photo is misleading, and leaning toward us her pregnancy is concealed. Maybe...Maybe Andy should give the writing chores over to his beagles. If they slammed their paws against the keyboard randomly, the result would still make more sense than does the bilge produced by their master.
Wow. And here, I was afraid someone might call me crazy for suggesting that a little carefully-controlled inflation might not be such a bad thing right now. (See post below.)
18 comments:
Good show, Joseph. Why is Andrew so obsessed with anyone's uterus?
And in case he's never seen it, there are women who don't show. A very thin neighbor of mine had to tell me she was expected in two months!
"It would be irresponsible not to speculate," indeed.
May I ask what Sullivan would know about procreation? He needs to take his medication before his full-blown psychosis and massive mommy issues become evident to all his readers.
Ooops...too late!
one of the most embarrassing aspects of this campaign is the number of men - childless men, especially - who seem to regard themselves as experts in normal pregnancy development and appropriate maternal behavior. Indeed, even more expert than women who have given birth. The creep out factor is really, really high.
I worked in a newborn nursery for two years. there are a staggering number of women who show up to deliver who don't even know that they're pregnant. Our nursery had approximately 200 babies a month, and out of that we would see four or five women a year who were either completely unaware of their pregnancy or only recently aware of it. All of them looked like Palin. Plenty of women gain less than 20 pounds during pregnancy - they pretty look like Palin in those photos as well.
The amount of amniotic fluid can vary from pregnancy to pregnancy. The size of the baby - six pounds is tiny. I wonder how big her other children were. What do you want to bet they were all a couple pounds bigger than Trig?
The War in Iraq is the biggest fraud in US politics. Sara's family issues are not.
He's jealous of Sarah because he wants to have a butt-baby.
He begged the McCain campaign...
Sh!t! If I had been part of the McCain campaign I would have ignored him too.
Too funny, madamab!
But, it must be asked:
Why is the Atlantic giving him a platform?
Calling Sully "crazy" is like saying the Pope has religious beliefs.
I find nothing insane about those speculating on this question. It is far from settled by facts on record, which instead appear to impeach the governor's story by their ABSENCE(S).
If you read the piece (and maybe a self-referential link or two), you might understand where Sully is coming from a little better.
As he explains, originally, the McCain campaign claimed that there were lots of pictures of Palin while pregnant this last time. Sully says this 'lots' turned out be barely three, and that the McCain campaign had apologized for being inaccurate. So this picture is a sizable addition to the bare three extant such photos known of before.
But the details of this picture aside, there is much more to the Palin/Trig story than those calling the skeptics koo-koo are prepared to admit. All of which could go away tomorrow with the SLIGHTEST bit of documentation, all of which has been withheld, although it has been long promised.
Palin said she would release her medical records. As of the eve of the election, a bare 2-3 page summary report from her doctor was released, which included no medical records at all.
Frankly, the new wrinkle I heard today, that Trig was INDUCED, I find more suspicious than ever. (After 4 prior deliveries, normally, and please if you know the rate of exceptions, tell me, any next delivery is post haste.)
While I would welcome Gov. Palin's becoming the poster child for the GOP in 2012 (because I think she is a dreadful candidate for any persons not already in the base of the GOP), I also look forward to having these questions dodged a lot more, and then, perhaps, answered believably.
XIslander
Zee:
He's like Howard Stern - he's the "shock jock" of blogging.
Howard, unlike Sully, is occasionally funny.
Mobody with any sense takes either one of them seriously.
XIslander,
It's none of your business. Personally, I don't think W is the father of the twins, but that doesn't mean I have the right to ask questions about it.
Your post, and Sully's post, are flat our fucking creepy as all get out.
Trig was only 6 pounds at birth. If she was induced, there was probably something going wrong. All these people speculating on a pregnancy that is none of their damn business is just flat out, atavistic misogyny.
You don't think he's the father of the twins? First I've heard of THAT theory.
I mean, if those girls aren't Bushes, how come they're so self-centered?
Joseph,
Look at those girls - there isn't a trace of the Bush family in either of their faces, though Jena looks like her mom. I know W and Laura were thinking about adopting when she miraculously got pregnant. I think it's a donor thing, myself.
I actually kind of think Jena may have turned out somewhat normal. I was impressed with her wedding pictures. her wedding was, well, humble. Nothing ostentatious in the least. I've been to a lot of weddings in my life that were grander than hers, and the ones I attended were thrown by people with far less money than she and her fiance have.
I could be wrong. Anyway, it's just my observation. I've never read anyone else talk about it, but it's as well-founded as this trash about Palin is.
. . . As of the eve of the election, a bare 2-3 page summary report from her doctor was released. . .
which would make it 2-3 times longer than Obama's.
She was induced because she was leaking amniotic fluid. Once your water breaks the baby must be delivered within 24 hours or there's a risk of infection.
Put away the tin-foil hat, ANONYMOUS!
Sullivan's obsession with Palin's uterus is crazy. He's crazy. He's a complete and total woman-hater, an embarassment to gays. He's a stereotypical pre-Stonewall queen who is jealous of women's procreative capacities. Did you know that in his famous barebacking advertisement, outed by the excellent gay journalist Mike Signorile, Sullivan divulged that he was into "bi-scenes"? Chacon a son gout, but methinks that a man famously obsessed with all matters same-sex this is just a bit....queer.
He thinks that he's covered his sorry ass by asking for Biden's medical records. Nope. There's no comparison. Biden is 65 and had a brain aneurysm. He doesn't look too great. There *are* health concerns with Biden. But there are no health concerns with Palin. I don't like her, would never vote for her or for a ticket that had her on it, but I would defend to the death her right to protect a zone of privacy around her pregnancy.
Sullivan doesn't realize how crazy he has become. You can't blame him for this. What's shameful is that he's a media star and is quoted by the reigning idiots of our time: media pseudo-pundits. That makes a mockery of true working men (and women's) efforts. When you think of how many honest men and women are struggling nowadays, and you think of how this piece of dreck dribbles out garbage from a privileged perch in Providence, you get depressed.
J just sent a follow up comment which was very good. Unfortunately, I hit the wrong button and, I fear, it was canceled. My apologies!
Zee - Clearly, The Atlantic feels it's important to disseminate his propaganda.
Isn't that special?
BTW - I would like to question whether Michelle bore Sasha and Malia, and I demand at least 7000 photographs of her pregnant with each one of the kids. I would also like DNA tests to prove that Barack is the father of Michelle's kids, should she actually have borne them.
If I am not furnished with all this proof of things which are none of my business, and even if I am, I pledge to spend multitudinous hours speculating deliriously about them online, sometimes even manufacturing "proof" that Barack and Michelle are space aliens, out of whole cloth.
Now, X-whatever, Obot dumbfuck, doesn't that sound crazy? THAT'S BECAUSE IT IS.
Get a fucking life.
Gah! Well, while I attempt to reconstruct my earlier and more sober brilliance let me say that this:
"If they slammed their paws against the keyboard randomly, the result would still make more sense than does the bilge produced by their master."
made me cackle raucously out loud.
OK, here, to the best of my ability, is what I followed up my first comment with earlier. In fact, I've thought of a few more things to add, as well.
In the post Joe linked to) Sully sez:
"Actually, the Dish went out and interviewed eight of the leading obstetricians in the country and laid out all the facts of the case and asked the experts for their take. While none would say that this pregnancy could not have happened, and none would comment on a case they hadn't examined personally, all of them said it was one of the strangest and unlikeliest series of events they had ever heard of and found Palin's decision to forgo medical help for more than a day after her water broke and risk the life of her unborn child on a long airplane trip to be reckless beyond measure." (Emphasis added.)
Let's leave aside the obvious ludicrousness of eight anonymous "leading obstetricians" commenting to a political blogger about a pregnancy that they have no knowledge of beyond journalistic accounts.
Well, no, let's not leave it aside. Let's note it, and guffaw. Then we will first dispatch the nonsense about Palin's pregnancy, and then proceed to the meat of the paragraph, about Sarah Palin's "recklessness" which I think exposes Sullivan's true and disgusting agenda.
Reaching deep into his fund of gynecological expertise, Sully sez: "Remember that, as a general rule, pregnant mothers show more with each successive pregnancy."
I respond: bullshit. (Until I see statistics that prove this.) What's the name of the "leading obstetrician" who told him this piece of folk wisdom? Successive pregnancies by logic happen with older mothers, who are, as a rule fatter than their younger selves. It's simply false to say that a successive pregnancy is by definition a more noticeable one. To my knowledge. Let's see some stats.
I don't know why Sarah Palin looked so trim during her last pregnancy, but here's a thought: as a figure-conscious woman in her mid-40s, she was obsessed with keeping thin in a way that she wasn't when she was a carefree, naturally skinny younger woman. She jogs and exercises hard. She probably remembered how hard it was to lose the baby weight even when she was young, so she really watched it and kept thin. Yes, you can do this and not hurt a baby. The figure skater Yekaterina Gordeeva gained 18 pounds during her pregnancy and delivered a perfectly healthy 5 pound baby, who now skates. It's a myth that need to gain a lot of weight to have a normal-sized baby:
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancyhealth/eatingfortwo.html
Women who get really big during pregnancy tend to be (in my experience, I emphasize), women who use the pregnancy as an excuse to eat a lot. So they get fat. Think women got big and fat during the Ice Ages?
Last but not least, please take a look at this video. At 5:00, Palin give us one of her trademark winks. A couple seconds after that, she pats an obviously pregnant belly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQMEwK781yE
OK, enough of this.
Palin was pregnant and eventually even Sullivan will be forced to admit it. As for those of us who are sane, it's not an issue.
So let's get to the heart of the matter. Let's take a look at Sullivan's quotation of obstets charging Palin with being "reckless."
That's a very different thing from saying the pregnancy never occurred. If she was reckless, she was pregnant. If she wasn't pregnant, she wasn't reckless.
Sullivan is so taken with his own blarney he's not aware that he is quoting people who are undercutting his charge that she wasn't pregnant. Or perhaps not.
Now, whether Palin was reckless or not is properly none of anybody's business. But since Andrew brought it up, and since Palin is a public figure who made Trig part of her campaign for Veep, I'll say this: I do think that she behaved recklessly. Why? We'll never know. This should remain in the zone of privacy. But disquieting thoughts intrude. Was she ambivalent? Did she want to get rid of Trig?
And that, I charge, is Sullivan's real game here. Notice that Sullivan repeats robotically that he thinks it's a great thing to have a Down's baby - in the context of questioning whether the pregnancy ever took place!!
My own guess is that Sullivan knows damn well Palin had Trig. He does this all the time, he's done this since he started blogging. He takes a point, reverses himself, reverses his reversal, and then ends up somewhere in the vicinity he started out in.
But never mind his tiresome twists and turns. In this case, Sullivan is trying to insinuate without saying openly that Sarah Palin tried to get rid of Trig. If he can charge her simultaneously with (a) faking a pregnancy and (b) behaving recklessly during her pregnancy, I can charge him with making reckless charges and insinuations.
He does so because he hates her with an irrational passion. Sullivan is obsessed with Palin and blogs her several times a day (the last I read him; I've stopped).
He hates Sarah Palin with an irrational passion, just as he hated Hillary Clinton with an irrational passion.
What do Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have in common?
I give you one guess. Fail it, and you go to the back of the class.
Actually, I think that he hates Palin with an even deeper passion than he hated Clinton. I conjecture that he hates Palin frenziedly because Palin is sexually attractive to men in a way that Hillary is not, and is heterosexually fertile than one-time mom Clinton. There is something about this pregnancy that has simply driven him over the edge. He was never very stable. Now he's bonkers.
Deeper than that, I'd rather not go, but we must, because Andrew Sullivan is a legitimate media star.
This is bigger than Sarah Palin. I think Sullivan is a menace to our democracy, he is hurting our country, and that bloggers should wake up and call the bastard on his insanity. Only the Corner at National Review has had the balls to do this. And you.
One last thing.
I recognize that the Palin-pregnancy-skeptics are looking at the same videos and pictures that I am. I got the link to the video from an article cited by Sully. They are saying that the Palin patting her belly in the video is wearing a Hollywood-style pregnancy puff.
Again: bullshit. Pregnancy puffs have come a long way since the 1950s, but there isn't one that looks like a real genu-wine planetarium tummy.
In the video, Sarah Palin ain't showing us no pregnancy puff, that is a small but pregnant belly, firm and swollen, as a pregnant woman's is. Carrying high, which is less obvious than the carrying low type.
Finally, riddle me this: why would a woman who has been pregnant four times, and who had gotten big as a house at least once, fake a pregnancy so subtly? If she were faking, she'd really do it up: big, swollen, waddling, gargantuan. That strikes me as easier to do than these subtle masterstrokes of fakery.
Oh, I know....she's doing a devilishly clever reverse triple head fake. She faked by not faking for 7 months, then she faked by faking almost indetectably until the last 3 weeks. (sarcasm alert) Yeah! Right! (/sarcasm alert)
There's no doubt of one thing: hang around in Washington DC for too long and you become a fucked up human being with no capacity for telling truth from fiction. In other words, you become an Andrew Sullivan.
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