I was doing my best to stay out of the McCain VP pick of Guv. Sarah Palin -- still trying to wrap my brain around the "why" and "huh?" of it to begin with -- but the surprise announcement yesterday (boy, they take "labor" day news quite literally), left me with little choice not to comment! But perhaps not from the expected angle.
Ok, I will readily admit that there was more than a moment of partisan snickering under my breath when it was announced that Palin's 17-year old daughter was five months into an out-of-wedlock pregnancy... the expected lines were quickly drawn in the political sand - either viewed as hypocritical of the beliefs that one party preaches or a poster-child of pro-choice and a call from family privacy.
But quickly I got to thinking about the bigger picture, what were any of these people thinking? While I am fairly confident that I will never walk in these particular shoes, I couldn't imagine an instance where I would take a job (particularly when I already have a pretty decent one), knowing that I would make a very private family matter very, very public... and that more than second-guessing on taking said job would only increases exponentially if that family matter revolved around one my children.
Now kids make mistakes, don't listen to their parents, etc., etc... with little regard to political, religious, etc. affiliation. I suspect no one was happy about this situation, particularly the two teenagers who now find themselves on quite a different life path than they probably expected or hoped/dreamed for.
While a VP invite is something that does not come along every day, I am still befuddled by the decisions of all the adults involved who I know can not have been naive enough to know that this wouldn't create a media sensation and have the face of this young girl (and now the 18-year old father) splashed all over the Internet, television, and the front page of most newspapers this morning... let alone turning it into debate fodder for talking heads. At least one good thing about Hurricane Gustav is that it at least diffused the media coverage of this story ever so slightly.
While it may be easy to say given since it's not the case, but I truly believe I would feel the exact same way if the roles were reversed and we were talking about the Democrat VP nominee (I am quite cynical about politics on a bi-partisan basis). Todd told me last night that this particular angle was being debated on Larry King Live last night and a McCain rep went ballistic saying that it was sexist and wouldn't be a big(ger) deal if it was a male candidate/nominee -- which again, I personally don't think matters at all.
One of the first headlines I saw this morning was this - McCain camp calls media's coverage of Palin 'offensive' - and while I would be hard-pressed to disagree - again, I am much more offended by the decisions and actions of adults that put this girl in the national (and international) spotlight in the first place.
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