Sarah Palin is speaking up about the old rumor that Trig Palin is not her son, but her daughter's son, and that she pretended to be pregnant to cover up her daughter's preganancy. She is reflecting the anger that people like Joe Scarborough and a few other Republicans displayed when this rumor first began.
I should mention that two of the bloggers I mentioned in my last post, Andrew Sullivan and Markos Moulitsas, have some connection to this rumor. On Markos Moulitsas' site, The Daily Kos, a diarist (anyone can register and be a diarist; these are not official "bloggers" of the site) started the rumor and soon the diary was taken down as being unaccpetable for the site. And every time someone else brought it up in a diary, commenters were all over it, insisting the rumor-mongering stop.
However, the rumor was already out there, as so many rumors were about Obama, none of which seemed to concern the McCain/Palin campaign.
Andrew Sullivan also noted the oddities about Palin's pregnancy and only asked that she release her medical records to put the rumor to rest, which she has not done, though she keeps saying she will.
The rumor was an unfortunate one, though Palin's behavior in keeping her pregancy secret for seven months, hiding her daughter at home during the pregnancy, rushing home early from a governor's conference to have the baby in Wasilla, revealing that her daughter was now pregnant and then promptly hiding her again, and refusing to release her own medical records, did not help squash it. Those medical records could have put an end to the rumor instantly and protected both her and her daughter from further speculation and scrutiny. But she never released them.
Sarah Palin made herself an easy target because she was dishonest on so many fronts, from that "bridge to nowhere" to her $150,000 wardrobe, all of which Andrew Sullivan has meticulously chronicled. But Palin will take no responsibility for her part in this nonsense.
On the other hand, this rumor was neither started nor encouraged by the Obama campaign. Obama and his surrogates never accused Sarah Palin of lying about this or anything else. In fact, Obama went out of his way not to criticize Palin in either speeches or ads, while she was merciless towards him, calling him a Marxist, a socialist, and a pal of terrorists. She said he was "naive" and not ready to be president, a laughable example of the pot calling the kettle....
Sarah Palin did everything she could to slash and burn her way through Obama's good name, and wanted to use Jeremiah Wright to twist the knife even more, but John McCain drew the line on the Wright issue.
Obama, it must be remembered, put up with a lot more slanderous rumors about himself than Palin did about herself. And he did absolutely nothing to encourage them by acting odd and trying to hide things the way she did. He was accused of being a non-citizen and a Muslim, of being a radical, of hiding his Muslim roots, of being schooled in a Madrasa, of being a friend of Louis Farrakhan, of approving of Jeremiah Wright's "anti-American" sermons, and of being a Marxist. And you didn't hear him running around slamming right wing bloggers and internet sites, even when they put out that ridiculous rumor about a non-existent tape in which his wife supposedly ranted against "Whitey." He let his character speak for itself and he won people over with his honesty and example.
So for Palin to cry "foul" over some rumor started on the internet, but discouraged by most Obama supporters, is quite hypocritical. Frankly, I have no sympathy at all for someone who can dish it out through the campaign, but now after losing can't take it, especially when she could have easily disproven the rumor.
Obama had no way to refute labels and accusations that had no basis in fact and could not be disproven with a simple medical file. How does one prove that one is not a Marxist or a Muslim? If a lifetime of patriotism and twenty years of Christian worship cannot disprove such rumors to the wing-nuts, then the wing-nuts have their own agenda and it has nothing to do with the truth.
On the other hand, Palin could have easily put the rumor to rest about Trig's birth. All she had to do was release her medical records, and she refused.
