Two years in the lives of Sarah Palin's political props

I wrote a post about Sarah Palin's large, loving family on March 9, 2009. They have changed a lot since then, but are still being used as props.

The Palins then:

Todd's nativeness is constantly exaggerated. The stories get more and more embroidered and outrageous. Todd is an example to all natives, his lyfestyle should be copied by all those whining natives. They should seize opportunities upon the North Slope, the mines, anything that doesn't involve preserving their way of life. Todd did it and still returns to his village, still embraces all things native, still lives in rural Alaska when he has the chance. Yes, Todd spends one season doing real work and the rest of the time he indulges in the quaint native lifestyle in his village and all its pleasures. It's a win win situation!

Track made the sacrifice of not pursuing higher education in order to serve his country in Iraq. We all heard it at the rallies. Track is risking his life so the people of America can have freedom of speech. He's also obeying God's will. After all, the war in Iraq is a task from God.

Bristol served more than one purpose. She was paraded before the nation and the world as a pregnant teen to prove that Sarah was Trig's mother. Now Bristol is the poster girl for planned, unplanned, accidental, whatnot teenage pregnancy. Abstinence is good, is bad, it works, it doesn't work, it's not realistic, whatever. Sarah is the ultimate supportive parent, the living proof that these things can happen in any family, but they are blessed to have a strong, loving family and so on.

Willow should be renamed Wisdom. She was the first one to notice that Trig had Down's Syndrome, giving Sarah another opportunity for an emotional platitude. "If he does, you know you will still love him, Willow. It'll be okay." Then Willow made an incredible remark when she heard on the radio that 95 % of the people in America would benefit from tax cuts, according to campaign promises made by Barack Obama. She turned to her mom and asked "What about the other 5%?" Mom explained that those were the ones who had worked hard to make America great, but they were rich. "Why should they be punished for their success?", said Willow. Oh, the wisdom of a child!

Piper is Sarah's favourite sidekick. She goes everywhere with Sarah, she appears in every interview, whenever possible. Of all the members of the family, Piper is the busiest state official, clocking more airmiles in the service of the state than all the others. We saw Piper standing next to Sarah at the 50th year of Alaska Statehood gala, in January this year, wearing a lovely summer dress and high-heeled sandals. When Matt Lauer interviewed the Palins at their home, there was Piper in high heels again, so cute! Piper gives radio interviews as well. I wonder when she manages to find a gap in her busy schedule to attend school!

Trig doesn't rank as high as Piper in Sarah's preferences, but he'll do as a valuable prop. Trig was the vice presidential campaign mascot. He was passed to everybody who cared to hold him, was dressed like a cute elephant for Halloween, had his hair smoothed with Piper's spit (that cute Piper again!). He worked tirelessly during the campaign, staying up late, braving the noise, the bright lights and all the commotion of the rallies. Trig does a great job humanizing Sarah Palin.

There are no photos of the whole family from March 2009. This will have to do, just delete Levi

The Palins now:

Todd is not so native anymore. I suppose it isn't a very hot selling point for Sarah's new image. She made some passing references to it on Sarah Palin's Alaska, but the show was all about HER, after all. These days Todd doesn't work for a living anymore. Now he's a combination of enforcer, handbag carrier, supermom to the children, still doing the Iron Dog thing and appears to be the only adult from the clan who has a proper relationship with Trig. According to the tabloids, gossip websites and various bloggers, he's not too keen on "hot" Sarah and has strayed a bit. Who's going to carry Sarah's purse now?

Track is still the token army guy in the family. Now he's a veteran and nobody can take it away from Sarah. The last time we saw him, he showed utter disinterest in the family business he was about to inherit. We didn't really buy that story line from Sarah Palin's Alaska. Track is not a willing prop and Sarah can't use him much, apart from wearing bracelets and hanging stars around the place to show she has a son in active service. Is he still active? Never mind...

Bristol has changed the most and is now a mini-Sarah, complete with her own prop. Bristol does speeches (as opposed to screeches, but still...), is dilligently writing her memoirs and has hinted at a political career. Bristol changed diapers, couldn't get a decent night's sleep, got up at 4 or 5 am to bathe Tripp, bought a condo, sold the condo, posed for magazine spreads, "danced" her way into American hearts, then packed her stuff and her prop, bought herself a new chin and moved to Maricopa. The mother/daughter bonding on Sarah Palin's Alaska was truly moving: Clay pigeon shooting and whacking halibut, such tender moments...

Willow's image has changed also, too. Once a child wise beyond her years, she transformed into a rebellious young woman, sneaking boyfriends into her bedroom, pulling faces at inappropriate moments and smashing her younger sister's face into cakes. Apparently, she also acquired a taste for some breaking and entering. As a prop, she serves as an illustration of Sarah's magnanimous attitude to dealing with teenagers. She let's them make their own mistakes and find their own way, but laments their mistakes being on the cover of the National Enquirer. Hey, they don't need the NE, Willow and Bristol can display all their charm on Facebook, where they use well constructed sentences, full of beautiful words.

Piper... the cute kid from the campaign now looks deeply unhappy. Piper was OK on the first book tour, but the child we saw on the second looked sullen and distant. On Sarah's show she sported a bumpit under her highlighted hair and the cuteness was a thing of the past. We also noticed that Piper wears make up on occasions. On Sarah Palin's Alaska, Piper's mother/daughter moments were very awkward. Trig is now too heavy for Piper to carry around and she appears to have lost her babysitter role.

Trig is still his lovely self. He doesn't seem to be a very useful prop these days, at least not in person. Sarah still talks about what a blessing he is and how incredibly brave she was to have chosen to have him, but on Sarah's show he didn't seem to like her very much and showed his displeasure on more than one occasion. She took him to some Tea Party rallies, but the lack of chemistry between them is showing more and more. Trig was the underdressed star of the first book tour, but he was smaller and more compliant then (and never felt cold or uncomfortable, a real trooper!). I expect we'll see less and less of Trig in future. I didn't watch all the Sarah Palin's Alaska episodes. I gather all Sarah's children had their turn, with a dedicated episode each. Even Sarah's daddy and her brother had their moment of glory. Did Trig have a special episode? Unless we count the one with cousin Matthew, a freshly discovered cousin/ nephew/whatever with Down syndrome, where Sarah teared up spouting her usual platitudes, there was no episode for Trig. There was nothing about his daily routine, the therapies and programs to help him reach his full potential. Trig is a blessing, pity he was not blessed with a decent mother.


In the past two years we have seen many changes in the Palin family. All for the worse, I would say.

We would love to leave them alone, but Sarah Palin keeps shoving them in our faces to market her Christian/real American family values...

Sarah Palin's very old habit: Using her children as political props

The video above is a tribute to Sarah Palin and her family, made by a loyal fan.

Sarah Palin is very fond of saying "Leave my children alone." And yet, she seems to place her children in the spotlight at any available opportunity, using them to gain sympathy, to add the cuteness factor to her political campaigns and also as poster children for various other campaigns.

In Going Rogue, we learn that she would take her children with her while campaigning for a seat on the Wasilla City Council:

"Track and Bristol were still tiny, so I went door-to-door asking for people's votes, pulling the kids through the snow on a sled."

By the time she ran for mayor of Wasilla, Willow had joined her brood.

"And when it was time to knock on every door in the city again, I pulled Track and Bristol in a little red wagon, and this time I toted Willow in a toddler backpack."

The children helped her again, when Sarah Palin ran for a second term.

In 2002, Sarah decided to run for lieutenant governor and Piper joined in the fun.

By December 2005, Sarah was campaigning for governor.

Here's an example of  one of Sarah Palin's TV-ads used during her run for Governor in 2006:



"Now here I was headed home from Valdez, still toting kids on campaign trails, except this time (with longer distances to cover) using a Jetta instead of a sled."

As an infant, Piper became the poster child for the Alaska Right to Life.

"Ahead, on my right, I saw the Alaska Right to Life (RTL) booth, where a poster caught my eye, taking my breath away. It featured the sweetest baby girl swathed in pink, pretend angel wings fastened to her soft shoulders.

"That's you, baby," I whispered to Piper, as I have every year since she smiled for the picture as an infant."







The campaign trail when Sarah Palin ran for vice president is very well documented. All her children played a role, but Track and Bristol were absent as the campaign progressed. Willow, Piper and Trig were there for the duration.

Piper had been the hardest working Palin child until Trig took center stage, proving to be a much more powerful image in reinforcing Sarah Palin's right to life, anti-abortion credentials. None of the high profile organizations for Down syndrome or special needs adopted Trig as their poster child and Sarah Palin has paid lip service to any campaigns to raise funds or awareness in the challenges the children and their parents face on a daily basis. No, Trig seems to be used to promote Sarah Palin alone. He worked very hard during the vice presidential campaign and again on the book tour. Piper still plays a large role in her mother's ambitions, but now she has to share the stage with Trig.










Bristol is the poster child for abstinence, with some pro-life thrown into the mix. Magazine spreads, ambassador for the Candies Foundation and now she's going to play herself on the ABC show "The Secret Life of the American Teenager". Tripp is the prop of choice for helping Bristol with her credentials.





Track has to play a more distant role as the military son, but the blue star and his name on a bracelet have been milked for all they're worth.

Sarah Palin doesn't seem to have found any specific use for Willow, apart from the statutory rape/Dave Letterman's fiasco.

This mixing of family and work would be OK if they were something like the Partridge Family, which is not the case here.

Sarah Palin is not the first or the only working mother in the world. Millions of women all over the world have to juggle their domestic and working lives every single day. She always had choices regarding childcare. In the earlier years, she could count on a large, close-knit extended family. More recently, she could have used her considerable wealth to provide the best childcare for the younger members of the Palin clan. The thing with Sarah Palin is that she doesn't have any boundaries between work and family, so her children play very prominent roles in her ambitious career in an obviously deliberate way.

How can Sarah expect the media to leave her children alone?

Family Guy: Sarah Palin "chooses" outrage, but fails to see that Trig is so much more than his disability... UPDATED

Much has been said about the Family Guy episode depicting a character who has Down Syndrome. The young woman in question is not portrayed as a "poor me" type. She's quite assertive and capable. The writers didn't make her a sympathetic character, she's just another young person who happens to have Down Syndrome, but with flaws, like any other young person.

Does disability make a person not have any of the flaws "normal" people have? The show didn't mock disability. If anything, it avoided being patronizing. What's worse, a person being defined by their shortcomings or by their abilities, even if it's the ability to be just as obnoxious as anybody else?

Family Guy doesn't discriminate about who they're going to offend. Their taste in story lines and jokes is debatable, but in this case, the person with Down Syndrome was not the butt of the joke.

The young woman in the show made reference to the governor of Alaska - that was the joke - and we had the inevitable Facebook rant, this time signed (but not written) by Bristol Palin, with an introduction by her mother:

"People are asking me to comment on yesterday’s Fox show that felt like another kick in the gut. Bristol was one who asked what I thought of the show that mocked her baby brother, Trig (and/or others with special needs), in an episode yesterday. Instead of answering, I asked her what she thought. Here is her conscientious reply, which is a much more restrained and gracious statement than I want to make about an issue that begs the question, “when is enough, enough?”

“When you’re the son or daughter of a public figure, you have to develop thick skin. My siblings and I all have that, but insults directed at our youngest brother hurt too much for us to remain silent. People with special needs face challenges that many of us will never confront, and yet they are some of the kindest and most loving people you’ll ever meet. Their lives are difficult enough as it is, so why would anyone want to make their lives more difficult by mocking them? As a culture, shouldn’t we be more compassionate to innocent people – especially those who are less fortunate? Shouldn’t we be willing to say that some things just are not funny? Are there any limits to what some people will do or say in regards to my little brother or others in the special needs community? If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed. All they proved is that they’re heartless jerks. - Bristol Palin”

Trig may have extra challenges, but with proper support he needs not be described as less fortunate. Trig is a human being first and foremost. He has a personality that is not limited to his disability. When Bristol describes Trig as she did above, she's limiting him to his shortcomings.

The Palins never had very high expectations of Trig. In "Going Rogue", Sarah Palin describes her conversation with Todd when they found out Trig was going to be born with Down Syndrome. The focus was purely on his future physical achiements, on whether he could play sports or tinker in the garage. She talks about her sister's nephew who played Little League baseball on a "regular" team and about Todd's cousin, aged thirty two, loving life and cheering his team at hockey games. That's it.

In August 2009 I wrote a post about Trig and other young people with Down Syndrome. I found a number of very talented people with Down Syndrome who achieved a lot more than many "normal" people. They did more than play baseball in a "regular" team or cheer their hockey heroes. Music, acting and painting were some fields in which they excelled. I'm sure they would hate to be patronized and have their achievements diminished when compared to those of "normal" people. I also believe that they wouldn't like to be portrayed as some pliant push-overs, incapable of behaving like any of their "normal" counterparts, sometimes not so lovable.

We all have limitations and I can't imagine that we would like to be defined by them.

Wouldn't children with special needs have an extra deficit on top of their challenges if their own families didn't believe in them? Would any child with Down Syndrome benefit from being considered a mere political prop?

Trig's main shortcoming is not Down Syndrome. It is his own family and their low expectations. In fact, the same goes for all his siblings...










UPDATE

I have discovered (in an excellent post by our friend OzMud) that the character with Down Syndrome in the Family Guy episode was voiced by an actress called Andrea Friedman, who has Down Syndrome herself. Andrea is one of the talented people I wrote about in the August post. If Andrea doesn't see a problem with the episode in question, why should Sarah Palin see anything wrong with it? Of course, she couldn't miss the opportunity to use Trig as a prop yet again.

Sarah Palin doesn't have a clue about special needs, apart from using it to promote herself and sell books. Trig deserves better.

(H/T to Ripley in CT and Ella)
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