Palin, Johnston/Palin and Johnston struggle with each other - Will it never end? Also: "Trig-politics" continue in the media

Welcome to the next installment of the epic soap opera battle which I would like to call now "Palin vs. Johnston/Palin vs. Johnston" - at least these seem to be the front lines right now. At first I wasn't sure whether I want to write about it at all, because "Jerry-Springer-like internet battles" like these are the not primary focus of Palingates. However, there ARE some interesting aspects to recent events, and ultimately, there is also Sarah Palin. Without her NONE of this would happen. In saying this, I don't want to express that Sarah is orchestrating "everything" in the background - because I am convinced that this isn't the case (more below). But Sarah Palin is definitely the underlying cause for this tragic family battle in my opinion.

Also, there is an urgent need for everyone to try to come their senses and calm down. The uglier this public fight becomes, the more damage will be done and the harder it will be to "make peace" in the end. And there has to be a peace agreement, because little children (well, at least one...) are involved.

Let's take a look at the clip in which Bristol and Levi announced their engagement (click here for the video). As many of our readers have observed, both seem to be genuinely happy. This is good news amongst all the negativity surrounding the announcement.

On a lighter note, the reaction by Kathy Griffin to the news is as hilarious and spot-on as usual (VIDEO).

Then there is the public fight between, broadly speaking, Bristol and Levi on the one side and Mercede and Sherry on the other side. Mercede famously uses her for blog for stabs against Bristol and Bristol has used her facebook to attack Mercede. Tonight Mercede and Sherry will be on "Inside Edition", telling their side of the story.

We will stay out of this fight. After all, it's none of our business, and my hope is that at one point the parties will maybe seek the help of somebody from outside for an attempt to reconcile the parties with each other. I don't know if this will ever happen, but it would be awful to think that this public fight will never end.

Maybe Mercede and Bristol should just fight it out (JOKE!):

As mentioned above, I don't share the popular belief that this engagement was orchestrated in the background by Sarah Palin. This engagement is ultimately a great embarrassment for Sarah Palin. She and Todd did everything to drag Bristol away from Levi. I don't believe at all that Levi has been "bought off" by the Palin, as some claim. Is he earning money from this engagement? Yes, he is, as Levi and Bristol sold their story to US Weekly, and it looks like there could be a reality TV show in the works. However, this is not same as being paid off by the Palins.

Various inside reports seem to confirm my view. Popeater reports:

Sources tell me that the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee is furious about her daughter's decision and thinks Bristol is making the biggest mistake of her life -- despite the fact that she and Todd eloped in 1988 without telling their parents. Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin

But it was ultimately Sarah who played grandma and comforted Bristol during her toughest times, while Johnston soaked up his fifteen minutes of fame by posing for Playgirl and hanging out with comedienne Kathy Griffin.

But it all comes back to politics. A Republican insider tells me Sarah is worried that her loose-lipped son-in-law will continue to ruin her political career and the public's perception of the Palin family.

"You can't control who your kids fall in love with, but Sarah wants this kid to go away. However, that doesn't look like it going to happen," the insider admits.

"So for the time being, Sarah is doing everything she can to protect her daughter and herself. And trust me, Levi has been warned. This isn't the sort of family you want to mess with twice."

In addition, we have confirmation for the fact that Sarah and Todd Palin are unhappy from a surprising source - Ben Barber, who apparently was Bristol's boyfriend shortly before the reunion with Levi (well, didn't Levi say a long time ago that Bristol isn't really the girl for abstinence...).

Ben Barber gave an interview to Shushannah Walshe from the Daily Beast. Shushannah is one of the authors of the very informative and well-written book "Sarah from Alaska".

Ben Barber

Walshe writes:

Barber is clearly miffed that Bristol and Levi are back together. “I don’t understand how Bristol can go and spend her life with someone who can’t get his GED? What’s he going to do when all this stuff has run out on him?”

Barber may sound like a lover scorned. But it’s clear he respects the Palins—especially Todd, whom he described throughout the interview as “the coolest guy.” He said that Track and Todd had invited him to fish with them last weekend in Dillingham, but he couldn’t get out of work to meet up with them. Barber was in Wasilla with the family when they first found out the couple had reunited.
“[Bristol] never had a good relationship with her Mom and Dad, so not telling them (about the engagement) doesn’t surprise me. But I know the whole family isn’t happy about it. I was in town for a night and stopped by to see Todd and Track. They were furious.”

Barber says upon hearing the news he went outside with Track and asked him what he thought of the rekindled romance. Barber said Track was “disappointed and didn’t approve of the situation”—so much so, Barber says, that Track called his sister by a four-letter pejorative.

By contrast, Barber says Levi handled the news that he had gotten together with Bristol rather well. “It really surprised me. When Levi did find out, he was very mature about the situation. He was more happy that it was me with Tripp and Bristol than someone he didn’t like. I still wanted to be friends, but Bristol wouldn’t let me do that.” Barber admits that he then dropped Levi as a buddy. “I feel pretty low as a friend for doing that,” he says, adding he doubts he’ll be asked back as a groomsman this time around.

According to Barber, the constant attention on her family has taken its toll on Bristol. “She totally swapped personalities,” Barber said. “She used to be super passionate and a really nice person. Two or three years ago she was super cool. And around Christmas time she was the same Bristol. But now a lot of this has gone to her head. Her mom’s, too.”

So we will have to wait patiently and see how this tragic soap opera will unfold. As I mentioned above, I just hope that all participants will be able to get along in the end and will find an agreement. After all, they are family.

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Regardless, we should not forget about the politics! I have said several times before that Palin/Johnston family feud is ultimately a great distraction which takes time and attention away from Sarah Palin's "rise to power". We should not fall into this trap.

Bill O'Reilly recently expressed his outrage that the "Down-Syndrome-song" in "Family Guy" received an Emmy nomination - and so did his guests:



The right-leaning website mediaite reports:

The program itself did not get the nomination, according to O’Reilly’s report, but, rather, the song that plays at the beginning of the episode, which has lyrics about Down Syndrome. After playing a refresher clip of the Family Guy episode for those who had forgotten, O’Reilly asks Hoover and Carlson: “Are the Emmys making a political statement of support for Family Guy’s alleged attack on Palin by nominating the soundtrack to that particular episode for an award?”

Hoover sees a serious problem with the message it sends about special needs people in American society, and called it “rewarding people who are making special needs children the brunt of our jokes.” Even if the episode itself wasn’t nominated for content, the lyrical content of the theme song was enough to be seen as an endorsement of this type of humor.

Unlike her colleague, Carlson didn’t analyze the potential general messages the Emmy organization was sending out. She took the political route, and in no unambiguous terms called the move “a total attack on Sarah Palin, end of story,” by the academy that hands out nominations. She said that the reason Family Guy did not get what she would deem to be an appropriate reprimand, why they chose to air the story, and, later, why the powers-that-be who give Emmy nominees handed one to Family Guy was because Sarah Palin had a child with special needs and “Hollywood hates Sarah Palin.”

So it's all about Trig again. Will this ever end? ;-)

It seems that Trig is the only Down-Syndrome child out there in the nation.

Of course, neither Bill O'Reilly nor his guests mentioned the fact that the down-syndrome-girl in that "Family Guy" episode was famously played by actress Andrea Friedman, who herself has Down Syndrome. And not just that, but remarks by Andrea Friedman received huge attention in February this year, after Palingates exclusively published the full text of her statement in which she was highly critical of Palin's stance. Apart from Palingates, this statement was only also obtained by the New York Times, and they omitted vital parts of it.

Andrea Friedman also directly addressed Sarah Palin on TV - and never received a response from Palin, who because of her well-known personality disorder is unable to admit mistakes:

Sarah Palin can run on an imaginary mountain, but she cannot hide! ;-)

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PLEASE NOTE:

We don't claim that it's the "ultimate truth" what we present here. It's our opinion, based on the available information. Other people might come to different conclusions, and we strongly encourage everyone to discuss these issues and make up your own mind.
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Sarah Palin, "master practitioner of identity politics, was outranked by Andrea Friedman" - TIME

Picture by Francisco Caceres

Time has an excellent article by James Poniewozik looking into Sarah Palin's cartoon war. The article makes an opening reference to the film Annie Hall and Marshall McLuhan, which I'll quote for context:

In the movie Annie Hall, Woody Allen's character, Alvy Singer, is standing in a movie line, listening to some blowhard intellectual hold forth about media scholar Marshall McLuhan. When the loudmouth cites his own academic credentials, Singer produces the actual McLuhan to refute him: "You know nothing of my work!" Alvy 1, Egghead 0.



Palin posted on Facebook that the scene was "another punch in the gut." This time, however, Palin's outrage prompted not an apology but a smackdown, from Andrea Fay Friedman, a Family Guy voice actress — who actually has Down. "My parents raised me to have a sense of humor," she said. "My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes." Ouch. Cartoon 1, Politician 0.

The Family Guy scene was a personal shot — but at Palin, not Trig. Friedman's character was assertive, intelligent and confident (and a young woman, not an infant boy). Palin seemed to be defending neither her son nor the disabled generally but herself, a public figure whom a cartoon had the temerity to poke fun at.

But what's more important is the way Friedman bested her supposed defender: by beating her at her own game. As a public figure, Palin is the embodiment of the "I have Mr. McLuhan right here" argument, taking her authority not from policy papers or résumé credentials but from her biography.

Palin is a master practitioner of identity politics, with an ironic twist. When it comes to social issues or the academic canon or civil-rights legislation, it used to be conservatives who would chafe at liberals playing race, gender or other such oppressed-group cards. With Palin, though, conservatives have a champion who uses group identity — rural, female, military mom, special-needs mom, etc. — as her seal of authenticity. But against Family Guy and Friedman, Palin, for once, was outranked by someone enlisting her own biography and personal experience. This time, Palin was not the McLuhaner but the McLuhanee.

Now, Palin and her defenders could argue that Friedman is simply one woman with Down and cannot decide for everyone — disabled or not — what is and is not offensive. That response, by the way, would have the advantage of being correct. But it would also implicitly undermine Palin's claim to authority. She would then be just one more military mom, one more teen mom's mother — one more hopeful pol looking for attention.

I find it really wonderful that Poniewozik went further into his analysis of Sarah Palin's identity politics, extending it to the other weapons in Sarah's arsenal, in addition to her special needs credentials. He clearly debunks her claims of "talking the talk and walking the walk" as if her personal circumstances gave her ultimate authority to pontificate on just about any subject.

Andrea Friedman called Sarah Palin's bluff on special needs. Let's hope more people will do the same about the rest of her personal experiences so she can finally sit down and shut up.
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