And then there was morning, and then there was evening

I am tentatively... thrilled. More to come, as soon as Stewart, Colbert and I figure out what the hell to do now.

For the moment, I'll raise my tallboy to exeuctive orders.

Bristol Palin Is Pregnant - Right Now? Stair-Step Children Do Happen

Sarah Palin announced this morning that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol is currently pregnant - which, at first glance, does seem to contradict my last post.

There has been much discussion today of Bristol's pregnancy and the Daily Kos' August 30 claim that Bristol Palin, not Sarah Palin, is the mother of five-month-old Trig Palin. Steve Clemons of the blog Washington Note featured the above photo in his post "Looks Like Sarah Palin Due Some Apologies," a photo provided by Andrew Sullivan of The New Republic. This photo was taken five days before Trig Palin was born.

Like many of those who left comments on the Washington Note, I'm unconvinced that this single photo provides conclusive evidence that Sarah Palin gave birth to Trig Palin. As Hollywood and pregnant-nun Haloween costumes alike have proven, pregnancy can be faked, pretty easily.

The suspicious circumstances surrounding Trig's birth presented in the Daily Kos post - Bristol's months-long absence from school during the time Trig would have been gestated, Sarah Palin's long flight from Texas rural Alaska after her water had supposedly broken, Alaska Airlines representative Caroline Boren's assertion that during her flight back to Alaska Sarah Palin's "state of pregnancy was not apparent by observation as she did not show any signs of distress," Bristol's appearance of pregnancy in the photo in my last post (taken when Sarah was supposedly seven months pregnant) and Sarah's lack thereof, the fact that April photos of Sarah Palin disappeared from the State of Alaska's website on August 29 - all of these factors still make me suspicious.

I am, however, less convinced than I was yesterday. That said, because of the strong opinions expressed in my last post, I feel compelled to weigh in on the topic once more. Given the relative unimportance of this issue, on the grander scale of world events, I feel petty discussing this at such length. Then again, if Sarah Palin and the Republican Party are covering up a scandal, they are likely relying on bloggers like me to drop the issue - for fear of perceived pettiness.

Thus, I am offering up a (frightfully simple) theory of how Bristol Palin may currently be in her second trimester, and have given birth to Trig Palin in April. I do not necessarily subscribe to this theory. I don't know who the mother of Trig Palin is and am convinced that, short of a DNA test, we will never know. I merely offer the idea up because it of its simplicity, and because no one has yet discussed it.

Sarah Palin's is a conservative Christian who believes in abstinence-only education. If her daughter did become pregnant with Trig Palin and gave birth to him in April, it is unlikely that Sarah Palin, a politician widely praised for her idealism and steadfast beliefs, would have agreed to put her sexually active daughter on birth control.

As the oldest of five children, whose mother was one of four, whose grandmother was one of 13, I wholeheartedly subscribe to the old wives' wisdom that fertility runs in families. Sarah Palin had (four to) five children. It's not inconceivable that her daughter might also be fertile.

It is also unlikely that, if Trig is Bristol's son, Bristol would be breastfeeding him - which, according to Breastfeeding Magazine - offers almost 100% protection against pregnancy. Many children of the Boomer generation can attest to the fact that the 1950's aversion to breastfeeding resulted in more than a few families with stair-step children.

Bristol Palin could have given Birth to Trig in April, gotten pregnant in May, and be, as the Palin camp states with perhaps telling ambiguity "about five months along."

America, did Britney Spears teach us nothing? [insert snarky grin] Young girls faced with conflicting urges and conflicting values can make some shockingly irresponsible mistakes. Of course, Bristol is no Britney, not by a country mile. But, like Britney, Bristol was reared in a conservative Christian household. And like all young American women, Bristol grew up in a culture in which sexual power and sexual proclivity have been prized as they have been at no other time in history.

Maybe Bristol made a mistake - twice. If so - if Bristol did give birth to Trig, and became pregnant again shortly theareafter, then this young girl is a sobering example of the failure of the abstinence-only sex education her mother champions.

Bristol Palin

I know I'm a mean, petty person to gloat over the misfortunes of others. That said, it's certainly not the suffering 16-year-old Bristol Palin, daughter of Republican VP Candidate Sarah Palin, may have faced over the past year that has inspired such twisted glee in this (admittedly malicious) progressive. I can only imagine how painful might have been to be an unwed, pregnant teenager in a Christian fundamentalist household - a household with a staunchly anti-abortion governor with national political ambitions at its helm.

If the solid evidence presented in the Daily Kos' August 30 post "Sarah Palin Is Not the Mother" points to the truth, and Trig Palin is VP Candidate Sarah Palin's grandson, not her son, then my heart goes out to Bristol Palin. I believe that any woman, no matter her age, should have the right to choose her own fate and the fate of her unborn child, especially if that child is suffering from Downs Syndrome.

Make no mistake, I do not imply that Bristol Palin would have, or should have, chosen to terminate her pregnancy. I merely claim that she deserved the right to choose her child's fate, both before and after its birth, as does every woman. I am by no means privy to the details of the Palin family dynamics, but I suspect Bristol exercised as little agency in her pregnancy as she will have in the life of Trig Palin.

That said, if the story is true, the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin's poorly orchestrated cover-up of her daughter's pregnancy - and the possible implications on the November elections - calls for full, throaty, chest-shaking, side-splitting belly laughs among progressive Americans.

The heart of the anti-abortion claim is that a pregnant woman should take responsibility for the life growing inside her, and should respect that life by bringing it safely into the world. This argument isn't much different from my own pro-choice beliefs. I believe that a woman should be able to take full responsibility for the life growing inside her; she should able to choose not to bring that child into an over-populated world, where adoption-eligible children are plentiful, if she does not feel adequately prepared to care for her child. Like anti-abortion advocates, I do believe that the unborn are children. But I believe that the world has too many poorly cared-for children to bring more neglected life into it.

What does this pregnancy cover-up really say about Sarah Palin's belief that a woman should take responsibility for her actions? If the Kos' story is true, Palin did not let her daughter take responsibility for her pregnancy or for her child.

No, it's not Bristol and the Palin family's ordeal that is so amusing, it's the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin....

...and the fact that, one night, 11 months ago, the fate of the free world may have rested in the loins of two horny teenagers.

Now, that is irony.

Taxing the Poor

In case you missed it, here's a link to video of the April PBS NOW program on Alabama's regressive tax structure:

PBS NOW "Taxing the Poor"

During his tenure as governor, my "political crush" Don Siegelman exacerbated the problem of the state's tax structure, which places undue hardship on the poor. Although the car manufacturing plants he brought to Alabama undoubtedly created much-needed jobs, Honda and Mercedes benefited from enormous tax breaks when they came to the state. Those taxes have to be paid by someone.

I Wish I'd Been Wrong

Back in January, I wrote a post entitled "A New Deal With the Blue-Eyed Devil" - in which I explained why I was beginning to mistrust John Edwards. I was tentatively supporting Edwards' presidential bid at that time.

Edwards' ties to Fortress Investments made me doubt the veracity of his stated commitment to serving America's underclass. As I examined Edwards' employment by and investment in a company with ties to offshore tax havens for the wealthy and subprime mortgage loans for the poor, I came to the conclusion that poverty was more a platform than a purpose for this personal injury lawyer.

Back in January, I deemed Edwards an opportunist. But I maintained then, as I do now, that opportunism isn't necessarily a bad thing. Moderated opportunism, like Obama's reversal of opinion on offshore drilling, may not be pretty - but it is smart politics. Politics is a dirty game - a game that often requires the betrayal of short-term goals in order to achieve a greater end. The ability to seize upon an opportunity that will end in that greater good, even at the expense of one's values, is the mark of a great politician. It takes remarkable moral intelligence to accurately weigh ends and means - to understand which justifies the other and make sacrifices accordingly.

And so, it's not the opportunism displayed by John Edwards in making his wife's illness a focus of his presidential campaign that angers me. Neither is it the hypocrisy of this focus in light of Edwards' extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter. No, it is his blatant disregard for the people whom Edwards' was claiming to serve - the underclass - that makes my blood boil.

By signing up for a foolhardy presidential bid knowing that this affair might surface, John Edwards placed those Americans whom he claimed to serve in peril. What if Edwards had won the nomination? Where would the Democratic Party be now, in light of this affair? Or, more importantly, where would those Americans whom Edwards claimed to serve be?

I think there is little doubt that, if Edwards had won the nomination, this affair could have ruined his chances of winning the general election. By embarking on a presidential bid with an extramarital affair lingering in his recent past, John Edwards failed the American underclass.

Any of the other Democratic candidates, if elected, would have served our nation's poor far better than John McCain would. If Edwards truly cared about "forgotten Americans" as much as he claimed to, he would have conceded the nomination to one of the other Democratic candidates - to a candidate who did not have the time bomb of a nasty affair ticking away in his front pocket.

Edwards' use of $114,000 in campaign funds to pay to his mistress, a novice-at-best filmmaker, for a few months of documentary work adds insult to injury. A millionaire many times over, John Edwards did not "keep" his mistress using his own funds. He used money supporters donated in good faith, instead.

It is clear Edwards' regard for himself, for his own desires and his own ambitions, outweighed his regard for those whom he served.

The American underclass, and those who truly wish to serve it, dodged a bullet with John Edwards. And we have the blogosphere, the Huffington Post in particular, to thank for it. I think the mainstream media would have uncovered the Edwards scandal, eventually. But John Edwards could have secured the VP nomination by then. In our 24-hour news nation, much is often made of little. Considering the near-nuclear fallout of the Rev. Wright scandal, it's not inconceivable to think that a vice presidential scandal on the level of the Edwards/Hunter affair, if timed correctly, could have tipped the scales in favor of McCain.

I wish I had been wrong about John Edwards. Although I never was so naive as to believe that his commitment to helping "forgotten Americans" was entirely selfless, I had hoped that his poverty platform wasn't as self-serving as Edwards is proving it to be.

I Think I Have a Political Crush on Don Siegelman

Sure, the word "crush" is jejune. And putting "political" and "crush" side-by-side seems a bit flippant, too postmodern to be taken seriously.

But apparently I'm not the first person in the blogosphere to describe pinning one's hopes on a promising politician as a "political crush." And I think, silly though it may sound, the term might just be appropriate.

Any of you out there who have ever been a 12-year-old girl know just what a let-down being a 12-year-old girl is. With the onset of puberty, you see your brash childhood confidence eroded. Once so assured of your talents, your abilities, your bright future - you find yourself hemmed in by insecurity and self-doubt.

Our nation is a 12-year-old girl.

Stay with me...

We were a prosperous nation, brash, confident, assured of our economic and political stature, of a bright future for ourselves and future generations.

Now, in the face of national economic downturn, growing influence of Asian superpowers, and increasing international unpopularity, we're feeling insecure. Our nation has begun to doubt itself and its future. We feel about as deflated as a 12-year-old girl.

And that's why we've begun to get crushes on promising politicians.

A young girl hopes to build a relationship with the object of her crush, to find comfort with him or her. She hopes her crush will help her feel secure about herself and her future once more.

We're looking for a politician who will do just that. We're looking for a leader on whom we can pin our hopes. We're searching for someone who will make us feel secure about our nation and its future.

And Don Siegelman is my new political crush.

As long as I'm making far-fetched comparisons, I'll share my dirty little secret. I'm holding out hope that Don Siegelman may be the South's answer to Nelson Mandela. Sure, it's a hyperbolic and grandiose idea. Don Siegelman's nine months in a U.S. federal prison don't begin to compare to Mandela's 27 years of hard labor in a South African quarry. And the economic stratification of the South, of the nation as a whole, certainly isn't as pervasive or overt as Apartheid.

But, if Carl Rove is made to testify before congress, if Rove and the Bush administration are finally called to account for the politically motivated prosecutions that occured on Attorney General Gonzales' watch, well, I'm about as giddy as a 12-year-old girl when I think of what the future could hold for Don Siegelman.

Siegelman has weathered his prosecution and imprisonment with such remarkable grace, consistently reminding interviewers that his personal struggle is not important. Siegelman repeatedly insists that the implications of his prosecution on American democracy as a whole is the real issue. Hearing him speak, it's easy to see why Rove feared him enough to prosecute him.

See below for Siegelman's interview with Air America's Sam Seder at the 2008 NetRoots Nation Conference.

"Traces of the Trade" - Is It Possible for the Descendents of America's Most Prolific Slave Traders to Ethically Make a Film on Their Family History?

Filmmaker Katrina Browne's documentary "Traces of the Trade" explores how her Rhode Island ancestors, the DeWolfs, brought over 10,000 West Africans to the United States and Cuba as slaves. I learned about Ms. Browne's film from her interview on the Leonard Lopate Show.*


In her interview with Lopate Ms. Browne states that the DeWolf family "... has the unfortunate status of being the family most invested in the slave trade by virtue of having been involved for over three generations."

Unfortunately, nothing seems unfortunate about the economic situation of a woman who, along with a group of her relatives, can choose to spend numerous months traveling the globe and creating a documentary - a documentary that, despite its important message, seems both self-aggrandizing and hypocritical - if not in its execution, then certainly in its promotion.

It's not that I don't appreciate the topics that Ms. Browne is bringing to the table. I do, very much. The under-explored role of the North in slavery, white America's lack of understanding of white privilege, the importance of establishing a national truth and reconciliation process - these topics have long been absent from our national discourse. I thank Ms. Browne for calling attention to them.

In her interview with Lopate, Ms. Browne readily admits that she was bequeathed immense social and economic privileges by descending from a wealthy and powerful slave trading family. And she calls attention to the social and economic disadvantages that have befallen the descendants of the slaves her family traded. I appreciate Ms. Browne's forthright address of these facts.

I was right there with Ms. Browne through the first part of the interview. "Yes," I thought, "it's about time white people started discussing these issues. It's time we started looking at the culpability of the whole nation, not just the South, in the slave trade and finally addressed slavery's lingering effects."

However, it was Ms. Browne's claim that visiting a dungeon in a slave fort in Ghana made her experience "full empathy" for slaves and their descendants, that got me to thinking...

What in this privileged, white, Ivy League-educated filmmaker's life experience could ever give her the capacity for that kind of empathy?

You got any ideas?

Me neither.

In his book, "Clinical Empathy," D.M. Berger defines empathy as "The capacity to know emotionally what another is experiencing from within the frame of reference of that other person, the capacity to sample the feelings of another or to put oneself in another’s shoes."

According to Berger, to experience empathy for another person, one must understand that person's frame of reference.

So I have a suggestion for filmmaker Katrina Browne. Ms. Browne, if you really do want to experience full empathy, if you want to erase, once-and-for-all the effects your family's slave trade, here's what you can do:

Quit your publicity tour. Hang up the laurels of "bravery" and "courage" the national media, not to mention black America itself, has showered upon you for making this film.

Liquidate everything you own, and divide your assets among the first 1,000 descendants of the 10,000 people your family enslaved that you can find. Burn your Princeton degree; cut off contact with all of your relatives and friends.

And move to Wilcox County, Alabama - one of the poorest places in America, where 72% of the population is black.

Once you get to Wilcox County, take whatever job you can get - without your Ivy League degree or your influential contact list. It will be menial. It will be repetitive. It will be far less satisfying, less creative, less fulfilling than filmmaking. It won't give you the fame that "Traces of the Trade" did. No one will be "applauding your courage" for getting up and going to work the same soul-crushing job every day.

Slip off your Cole's, and walk a mile in the shoes of the descendants of the people your family enslaved.

If Ms. Browne had made this film, and then disappeared into obscurity, entrusting the film's publicity into hands other than her family's, I would respect her. The topics she is addressing are important, and she addresses them intelligently.

But going on a media tour and profiting from her family's slave trading history is not much different than profiting off of the backs of slaves themselves. Even she is not profiting in dollars (which she may very well be, I don't know), she is profiting in fame. And today, that is more valuable than gold (or at least more valuable than the greenback). Fame is influence; it gives the power to pursue one's interests, to explore a million creative avenues, as financial backing is always available for the famous.

But perhaps I am being too hard on Ms. Browne. Her intentions seem noble, and her work with AmeriCorps, detailed in her bio on the film's website, is impressive. Perhaps she is making the best use of the accident of her birth - using the influence she has inherited to serve others. That is much more than I can say for most people born into Ms. Browne's position.

But if I am being harsh, I am the only person that is. I have yet to read an article on "Traces of the Trade" or listen to an interview with Ms. Browne that does anything besides laud her film and her work. If I am being harsh, then I argue that harshness is called for, as no one has yet looked critically at "Traces of the Trade," or the people who have made the film.

Seeing as how I'm a white cracker woman from the South, it's ironic that mine is the only the dissenting voice.


*Note: I was not able to view the PBS broadcast of "Traces of the Trade," as I heard Lopate's interview online, after the broadcast. I look forward to viewing the film when it is released on DVD and will post another bulliten if I find anything in the film that contradicts what I have learned by viewing the trailer and listening to multiple interviews with Ms. Browne.