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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

What Sarah Palin is doing to her children.

The ratings are up for "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Oh, that's so sad for the people who exulted last week when the ratings were down. I skipped last week myself, but I watched this week's show. It was pretty cool seeing the Palins hauling in fish nets, slicing salmon into strips, tying the strips with string, and hanging them up in a smokehouse, with Todd's Eskimo grandmother demonstrating how to set up the fire to get the smoke just right.

I was touched by Sarah's interaction with Trig and with another boy with Down Syndrome (a member of her extended family). It made me cry and it made me think about this post by Andrew Sullivan criticizing Sarah Palin for combining motherhood and a career in national politics:
Anyone one who genuinely cared about the privacy of her kids would have either said no [to the vice presidential nomination] or been extremely careful to release the information as soberly as possible....

[S]he parades a special needs infant in front of the press, dangles him half-naked in front of book tour crowds, uses him constantly as a rhetorical campaign prop, and cites him at almost every speech to appeal to pro-life voters....

What Palin has done with her young children is unprecedented. Think of how Obama strictly protects his daughters, and how George W. Bush did the same. 
Think of how the press — including you — regards those daughters as off-limits but goes after Palin's daughters.
What Palin has done is use her children, having failed to actually rear them. She is still doing it on her reality show. That she has gone so far as to use and thereby abuse a child with Down Syndrome whose interests are clearly in seclusion, careful nurturing and care, and constant parental attention, tells you a huge amount. 
Seclusion? Is that right, tucking those kids away from the rest of the society? Why not be out and proud?

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