la vie en rose

There is something going on in politics and the media right now that is really bothering me. I won't go into all the reasons I think that Sarah Palin is an absolutely terrible, unqualified choice for VP (maybe another time), but I am seriously wondering why she, as a mother, chose to accept right now. She has an unmarried and pregnant 17 year old daughter. A daughter that nobody except people in Alaska would ever know or care about, were it not for her selfish mother who is using her as a political prop. It is preposterous to believe that Governor Palin believed that her privacy would be respected on a national stage like this. I know lots of teenage girls. I was one once. I know how they think. No teenage girl would want the kind of attention that Bristol Palin is receiving right now. Think of the pressure! You have to make it work with the father of the baby, since your mother has promised everyone that you will get married and raise this child together. And the father seems like a pretty typical teenage boy, judging from his Myspace profile. F*** this and f*** that, "in a relationship but doesn't want kids." That's exactly the kind of man that a girl would want around her baby! You think a boy like that wants to get married? What a life they have to lead now, in the public eye, all because her mother wants to be vice-president. My heart breaks for that girl.

Having seen firsthand how beautiful adoption can be with some of my friends and their new son, I really don't agree with a teen mom keeping her child and trying to prove something. Between this, Jamie Lynn Spears, and the movie Juno, teen pregnancy sure is getting a lot of the spotlight these days. I actually really liked Juno, but I think that by showing the pain of living with your consequences and then giving up your child, the joy of the adoptive mother in receiving a son that she never thought she could have had, and how life still goes on for everyone, it was a more realistic picture. Marriage is not a fairytale, having a baby is not a fairytale. How sad that a 17 year old girl will have to learn that now, instead of finishing high school and going to college (do you think she'll even manage that?). The Republican Party is essentially glamorizing teen motherhood, all the while cutting funding to help teen mothers, promoting abstinence-only education when 60% of high school seniors are sexually active and 3 out of 10 American girls get pregnant, claiming that they're not sure if condoms protect against HIV, keeping the minimum wage below a living wage, cutting public healthcare, keeping paid maternity leave and sick days out of the hands of millions of women, creating policies that keep our schools in the gutter...they are not the party of family values. Families suffer when the Republicans get their way. When will America wake up?

Sarah Palin has shown extremely poor judgment in accepting John McCain's offer to be on the ticket and he has shown it by asking her. At the Republican National Convention they passed around signs that said, "Country First." Shouldn't it be "Family First?"