In the ABC News interview conducted by Charles Gibson, Sarah Palin stated: “When you're running for office, your life's an open book.”
If, as Palin says, her life is an open book, I think it is now incumbent on the press to ask Palin some questions about baby Trig's maternity. After all, Sarah Palin’s presumed maternity of Trig has become a powerful argument for her candidacy among much of the electorate. She cannot decline to answer such questions by saying she wishes to protect her children, since Palin herself outed Bristol’s current pregnancy. And more to the point, voters obviously have a right to know if a candidate for the vice presidency did in fact fake a pregnancy while serving as governor. Perhaps the biggest reason to doubt Palin's claim that she is Trig's mother is the very fact that she outed her daughter's pregnancy to rebut rumors of the faked pregnancy when she could have avoided that humiliation by providing convincing evidence in numerous ways, such as in the form of a birth certificate. And, of course, that announcement of Bristol's current pregnancy does not prove Trig's maternity, since we have no way of knowing for sure how many months Bristol is now pregnant.
There are other things that cast doubt. For example, not a single independent (i.e., non-family) confirmation of Trig's maternity been published in the news media, as far as I can ascertain. And that is odd, for if Sarah Pain is the mother of Trig, then of course the medical staff who attended to her at the hospital would gladly have come forward (with Sarah's permission) and said, "What bizarre nonsense those rumors are -- we helped deliver the baby!" Moreover, the physician who delivered the baby has never publicly said who the mother is (again, as far as I can determine) -- and she's declining interviews on the subject.
So, if we accept that Sarah truly is Trig's mother, there's just one strange thing or coincidence after another -- e.g., involving Sarah's seemingly reckless behavior in traveling to and from Texas in the eighth month; the physician's reportedly unsound advice concerning the trip; the inability or unwillingness of anyone to produce an official record of the birth; the amazement of Sarah's staff and the reporters on hand when Palin announced her pregnancy in the seventh month because, as the reporter wrote in his news account, she "just doesn't look pregnant"; Bristol's reported absence from school for over five months corresponding to the second and third trimesters of the pregnancy, etc. On the other hand, if we stipulate that Bristol is the mother, all the anomalies disappear -- except for the idea that a sitting governor would fake a pregnancy, which also seems bizarre. So where does the truth lie?
If Sarah Palin's life is an open book, as she claims, I think it is time that the press ask her to provide some convincing evidence for her version of Trig's birth, a version which to date is filled with holes.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
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