Earlier this week the DailyKOS pushed a rumor that Sarah Palin didn’t give birth to her 5th child, instead, they claimed her daughter did and there was a major coverup. What evidence was this all based on? I’ll let the KOS explain:
Well, Sarah, I’m calling you a liar. And not even a good one. Trig Paxson Van Palin is not your son. He is your grandson. The sooner you come forward with this revelation to the public, the better.
Funny quote on her having no desire for the Vice-Presidency aside, the article is direly clear. No one knew she was pregnant, not even her own staff. Quite a feat. Why the secrecy? Sarah has never given an answer, and upon further reading, no one has bothered to ask.
Checking with the Anchorage High School that Bristol Palin attended, reporters were given word that her family had taken Bristol out of school due to contracting infectious mononucleosis. The amount of time Bristol was absent shifts from five to eight months.
Bristol is pregnant in these pictures. She is not carrying belly fat, which grows outwardly wide, and does not become dome-shaped. That’s because fat is generally evenly distributed around the abdomen and a fetus is not. Bristol’s chest is sticking out, a normal body reaction when sucking in stomach muscles.
So there you have it… according to the DailyKOS, their facts, summed up, are:
- Sarah Palin didn’t look fat in the select pictures they found.
- Bristol Palin isn’t a skinny supermodel.
- Sarah Palin wanted her baby to be born in AK.
- Bristol Palin was sick and missed school.
That’s their shocking evidence. Since the DailyKOS picked it up, websites from Neowin to SomethingAwful to Fark to Snopes to nearly 5000 blogs started talking about this “story”. Each one spent time studing this poor 17 year old girl and talking about her belly fat. Did the daughter ask for this? No. Was there ever any proof? No. With just a little digging, last night I was able to find both statements from Sarah Palin’s doctor and a picture of her looking pregnant:
Palin kept in close contact with Baldwin-Johnson. The contractions slowed to one or two an hour, “which is not active labor,” the doctor said.
“Things were already settling down when she talked to me,” Baldwin-Johnson said. Palin did not ask for a medical OK to fly, the doctor said.
“I don’t think it was unreasonable for her to continue to travel back,” Baldwin-Johnson said.
So the Palins flew on Alaska Airlines from Dallas to Anchorage, stopping in Seattle and checking with the doctor along the way.
“I am not a glutton for pain and punishment. I would have never wanted to travel had I been fully engaged in labor,” Palin said. After four kids, the governor said, she knew what labor felt like, and she wasn’t in labor.
Still, a Sacramento, Calif., obstetrician who is active in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said when a pregnant woman’s water breaks, she should go right to the hospital because of the risk of infection. That’s true even if the amniotic fluid simply leaks out, said Dr. Laurie Gregg.
“To us, leaking and broken, we are talking the same thing. We are talking doctor-speak,” Gregg said.
Some airlines have policies against pregnant women onboard during the last four weeks of pregnancy, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists advises against flying after 36 weeks.
This was going to be Palin’s last flight anyway, her doctor said.
Alaska Airlines has no such rule and leaves the decision to the woman and her doctor, said spokeswoman Caroline Boren. Palin was very pleasant to the gate agents and flight attendants, as always, Boren said.
“The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress,” Boren said.
Palin never got big with this pregnancy. She said she didn’t try to hide it but didn’t feel a need to alert the airline, either.
Did the DailyKOS just wish this to be true so much they just selected “evidence” to support their theory? Apparently today they had to bow to the stupidity of the rumor they started so they released this entry:
OK, there is a visibly-pregnant Sarah Palin talking with a CBS 11 (Dallas Juneau) reporter at the Governor’s meeting in Texas end of the Alaska legislative session. She clearly appears to be pregnant.
Unless someone has counter evidence, we can drop this crap now. Yes, there are still some interesting questions, such as why she flew to Dallas and back when she was this pregnant, and why the Alaska Airlines crewmembers insisted that she was not visibly pregnant on the flight. Nevertheless, until this photo is debunked, we look stupid pushing this rumor.
That is all.
And the picture that proved it?
So there you have it. All over. So now I need to ask all the people out there that helped spread this story:
Are you proud of yourselves?
A simple question, I know, but the fact is with no evidence to back anything up, people all over the internet were willing to spread false rumors not only about Gov. Palin, but her daughter who did absolutely nothing wrong. Why don’t you all put yourself in her shoes? Could you imagine being a 17 year old girl who isn’t as skinny as everyone else? Now imagine there are giant blown up images of your stomach circulating the internet with people saying your little brother is your child. I bet that does wonders for someone’s self-esteem.
I think that children of candidates should be off-limits to stuff like this. They didn’t ask for their family to be in the spotlight, and I’m sure it’s hard enough as it is for them. I just hope everyone who spread this rumor takes a long look in the mirror and asks themselves what made them not go looking themselves and to instead blindly follow the “facts” presented by one blog. I used to think this type of thing was what the “right-wing” did to the poor “liberals,” but now I see that both sides can give as well as take. How sad.
