Isn't "Juno" A City In Alaska?

I am taking a break from the "Masshole Memoirs", as my friend Tim likes to call my blog, to kvetch about Alaska's Govenor Palin. As most of you have heard unless you've been on vacation...on the moon...that John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin has a 17 year old daughter who is five months pregnant. Do I care that a 17 year old is pregnant...not really. My mother was 17 when I was born and let me tell you, not the best thing. I can say with full conviction that she would have been better off having an abortion and not having kids till she was grown up, which may have never happened, but I digress. I am happy (cause I'm still here yeaaaa) that back in those days prior to Roe Vs Wade pregnant teens, especially Irish Catholic pregnant teens, thought it was relatively normal to have kids when they were still kids. There is a huge double standard here that the mainstream media has not yet exposed and that is if Barack Obama had a 17 year old daughter that was pregnant the Republican machine would be having a field day!

The party that touts "abstinence" as a method of birth control and drones on about family values and the fact that the godless liberals are ripping apart the moral fiber of this country have no further to look than number two on their Presidential ticket to see their failed policies and rhetoric. Regular readers of this space know the one thing that drives me "ape shit" is hypocrisy. Here are my points:

1) If Palin's daughter was poor, minority, fatherless or drug addicted or all of the former, then the religious right would says that the reason why she was pregnant was a moral issue and bring up the fact that she probably needs religion, an intact family unit and more religion. What's Palin's daughters excuse? "Her and her boyfriend got carried away in a loving moment and made an innocent mistake" is what they'll tell the congregation. Of course 17 year old black girls living in NYC, the place we can all agree as in moral decay ala Gomorrah, don't have loving moments with their boyfriends. They just fuck like animals and have no feelings other than jonesing for crack and succumbing to those decadent Hip Hop lyrics.

2) I can't speak for the Palin family, but she will be number two on a republican ticket, a party which touts abstinence as a method of birth control. If the Palin's sent their daughter to abstinence class, had her sign a "chastity agreement" or did nothing at all the outcome is the same, she is as knocked up as Jaime Lynn Spears. Right now the Red Stater's are all singing her praises, but are they really when she is now the poster child for ineffective birth control.

3) Isn't it a tad hypocritical to bash single parents who want to have kids (ala Murphy Brown) and gays that want to adopt because in their stunted view "how can you give your kids enough attention when you don't have someone to share the parenting?". The last I knew, Governors work 16 hour days and have very little time off. Her husband works for BP as an oil-field production operator and owns a commercial fishing business, which doesn't leave a lot of "family time". They have an intact family unit with plenty of financial resources, but their kid still got knocked up. I guess all of that family values shit the republicans have been shoving down our throat since Regan doesn't mean a thing. Even when you have the most traditional of families and a strong family unit with no financial concerns things can still go awry.

4) Why are her kids off limits in a political race? Since we know little or nothing about her what are we supposed to go on? Well, since she runs on an ultra- conservative platform we can use her own social views as a benchmark for evaluating her effectiveness. By having a 17 year old pregnant daughter she appears to be a failure as a parent by definition of her and her party's platform. If kids are off limits when evaluating a candidates character then lets ask the Kennedy's, Nixon's, Ford's, Regan's, Bush 41, Clinton's and Bush 43 about kids being off limits...yeah... right.

I have no personal issue with Mrs. Palin. I'll be the first to admit, as 99.9% of America will attest, that I know next to nothing about her. I do have an issue with the Republican party and how they will try to win at all costs, including spinning a 17 year old girls pregnancy to their advantage even when it goes against their core beliefs and have been bashing liberals on this for 20 years.

In the movie Juno, a 16 year old girl gets pregnant and decides to give the baby up for adoption to a well off couple. It paints an unrealistic and rosy picture of teen pregnancy. She lives in suburbia somewhere, has lots of support, is far from destitute and it all works out in the end. If the movie took place in NYC and the girl was black and poor with no father and a mother on crack would there be a rosy outcome? Isn't Juno a city in Alaska?