The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Bristol Palin, Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin and the Politics of Sexual Destruction

Posted on | December 6, 2010 | 41 Comments

“Everyone was trying to pit me against Bristol, but the truth is, we got along well. She never asked me to babysit Tripp or anything like that, but I consider her a friend. . . . I really like Bristol as a person. . . . I am proud of her for shaking her ass!”
– Margaret Cho

You might think Hollywood liberals would embrace it as a feminist Cinderella success story: The teen mom, seduced and abandoned by a two-faced cheater, gets a once-in-a-lifetime chance at a nationally televised dance competition. (Plot complication: She’s never danced in her life!) And yet, despite all odds, overcoming her own awkwardness and the disparagement of critics who call her “fat,” the small-town girl makes it all the way to the finals, becoming the object of worldwide admiration and a role model for young mothers everywhere.

But there have been no reports of bigtime producers bidding for the rights to make The Bristol Palin Story, and instead the heroine is predicably scorned and mocked, used as yet another weapon to attack Sarah Palin because . . . well, Sarah Palin is a conservative Republican, and therefore deserves to be attacked — by any means necessary.

(Quick aside: Note how accurately liberals identify their targets. If they wanted to mock chubby daughters of famous GOP politicians . . . uh, no, that won’t mock that one, because she’s a liberal, just like them.)

So here’s Margaret Cho, claiming to be Bristol’s friend and being “proud” of Bristol’s performance. Bristol had never said anything negative about Cho, and yet Cho could not resist the opportunity to use Bristol as a weapon against Governor Palin:

I heard from someone who really should know . . . that the only reason Bristol was on the show was because Sarah Palin forced her to do it. Sarah supposedly blames Bristol harshly and openly . . . for not winning the election, and so she told Bristol she “owed” it to her to do DWTS so that “America would fall in love with her again” and make it possible for Sarah Palin to run in 2012 with America behind her all the way. Instead of being supposedly “handicapped” by the presence of her teen mom daughter, now Bristol is going to be an “asset” – a celebrity beloved for her dancing.

And don’t miss the viciousness of Cho’s let-me-call-her-fat-while-I-pretend-to-be-sympathetic shot:

It’s heartbreaking that people are so awful to her about her weight. I think she looks fantastic, and why does everybody think they have a right to comment on our bodies? . . . If people call her fat what kind of impact does that have on women who have similar body types – which is most of us?

Can we talk bluntly here? Feminists who claim that “body image” issues are a product of oppressive male patriarchal misogyny are full of crap. Normal, traditional, heterosexual guys aren’t the ones telling women they have to be rail-thin to be attractive. I think I speak for a majority of Regular Guys in saying that we evaluate a woman’s attractiveness based on the package deal. It’s more than looks, and even if we are evaluating women on looks alone, the formula “skinny = sexy” doesn’t add up.

There are sexy skinny women and ugly skinny women, and there are big women who are totally hot. Most guys are hestitant to say that out loud, and there’s a good bit of joshing about chubby chasers, but when push comes to shove — er, so to speak — most fellows don’t mind a girl “with a little meat on her bones,” as we say down home.

More cushion for the pushin’.

Never missed a biscuit.

Baby got back.

Beauty comes in all sizes, and it’s not Regular Guys who are driving women to anorexia. The fashion industry isn’t dominated by Regular Guys. The editors of Vogue and Cosmo, the designers and photographers and fashion reporters aren’t Regular Guys. No, the beauty industry is run by women and gay men, and so if you want to point the finger about “body image” issues in the fashion culture, don’t point the finger at the “oppressive patriarchy.”

Back in the Good Old Days, when men were men, and Ike was president, and godless commie pinko traitors were sent to prison where they belong, the ideal of beauty was Marilyn Monroe, who certainly wasn’t skinny.

But I digress . . .

Nothing is so risibly misguided as Margaret Cho’s claim that Sarah Palin believed herself to be politically “handicapped” because Bristol is a single mom. Conservative voters love Bristol and consider her unmarried motherhood to be infinitely preferable to the kind of “choice” that liberals like Cho would have urged upon her.

Trust me, I know. My first reaction to the news of Bristol’s pregnancy, in September 2008, was a mixture of political exasperation — “What a P.R. disaster!” — and fatherly disapproval. My own daughter is almost exactly the same age as Bristol and, had I been in Todd’s shoes, Levi Johnston would have been presented with the choice between (a) a shotgun wedding, (b) his own funeral, or (c) fleeing Alaska and praying to God I never caught up with him. Where I come from, that’s what we call “traditional family values.”

When I initially expressed disapproval of Bristol’s pre-marital pregnancy, however, I got a double earful of outrage from Christian conservatives — to be more exact, Christian conservative women — who defended Bristol for having “done the right thing,” deciding to keep the baby when abortion would certainly have been the more convenient option.

You can’t be a populist and ignore that kind of grassroots feedback. So I took a second look at the situation, decided to make lemons into lemonade and wrote a column called “Punished With a Baby” (the title from an infamous remark of Obama’s) and — lo and behold, contrary to my own initial expectations — the attacks on Sarah Palin provoked a sympathetic backlash against her critics, producing a surge in the polls that made her “The Miracle Worker,” as I titled my next column.

All of which goes to show that Bristol Palin is no “handicap” to her mother’s political career, at least so far as conservative pro-life Republicans are concerned. And despite the inevitable hardships imposed by the utter indifference of The World’s Most Notorious Deadbeat Dad – Levi is a selfish punk who hasn’t done anything to help Bristol or the baby — the Palins are understandably proud of their daughter and their grandson.

So Margaret Cho invented this “Sarah Palin forced her to do it” story for the same reason she made those cheap-shot “fat” remarks about Bristol: Out of pure political spite.

Rather than to reciprocate this viciousness Bristol posted a gracious, cheerful response on Facebook:

Why do I want to set the record straight? Because it is this type of hurtful and false narrative that people promote to make my mom look bad. For 20 years my mom had my back — and for the rest of my life I will have hers.

Which brings us to the atrociously tasteless Kathy Griffin’s misguided attempt to “entertain” U.S. troops by making fat jokes about Bristol:

“What about Dancing With the Stars? . . . We got two words: Bristol Palin. . . . She’s the only contestant in the history of the show to actually gain weight. … She gained like 30 pounds a week. I swear to God, it was fantastic — she’s like the white ‘Precious.’”

In case you missed that pop-culture reference, Precious is a movie about an obese, illiterate ghetto girl who is an incest victim. God bless our troops, who had the courage to boo Griffin:

Griffin and Cho, like the members of the liberal media who applaud and encourage them, are engaged in a political search-and-destroy mission that began the moment Sarah Palin was announced as the 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate. The threat she posed to Obama was clear from the outset, and was quickly proven by a phenomenal poll surge for the Republican ticket, and they embarked on an unrelenting anti-Palin campaign that continues to this day.

There are no rules to this warfare, no boundary of decency the liberals will not transgress in pursuit of their intended prey. Everything is fair game to them, so long as they think it can hurt Palin. The sheer hatefulness of their attacks is enough to make me nod in agreement at Professor William Jacobson’s remark: “[A]s I reflect back on the past two plus years since Palin’s nomination, I’m wondering if an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight with the Palin haters is just what this country needs most, not least.”

As a partisan political strategy, Professor Jacobson’s idea probably won’t win approval from all the Smartest Guy in the Room types. Yet when you imagine the head-exploding batshit insanity that a Palin 2012 campaign would provoke among liberals, it’s kind of hard to resist the temptation. If nothing else, it would be a wonderful chance to expose the Democrats – who claim to be the party of tolerance, the party that really cares about women — as the hideous hypocrites they are.

“There seems to be a media competition at work, a sort of championship tournament. Every reporter, anchor, and pundit in America is engaged in a frantic effort to be the hero who fires the silver bullet that slays the Republican werewolf from Wasilla. . . . Why do they hate her? Because Sarah Palin is guilty of a sin for which liberals can never forgive a Republican: She’s more popular than they are. And everybody knows it.”
– Robert Stacy McCain, “Palin’s Popularity vs. Media Mania,” The American Spectator, Dec. 17, 2009

Bookmark and Share
Category: Celebrities, Culture, Feminism, Sarah Palin, Sex

Comments

  • Pingback: There’s still a few weeks left in 2010, but not counting two statements on my Facebook feed, this is the sentence of the year… « King B Live

  • JeffS

    Griffin has dug herself into a deep hole, and Cho just jumped in beside her, shovel in hand, ready to dig even deeper.

  • http://twitter.com/PatinMichigan RightWingMole

    The teen mom, seduced and abandoned by a two-faced cheater

    OH PLEASE![Remainder deleted. If you can't make your point without that kind of language, you can fuck right off, Chumley. Most sincerely, Wombat-socho]

  • Anonymous

    Right on the mark. While the old joke about hearing a blind date having a great personality may scare guys away, reality is in the long run a relationship is based more on personality compatibility than mere outward appearance. As they say looks fade, but ugly lasts forever and those remarks by Griffin and Cho reveal an ugliness about their personality. Hate makes for ugly.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1385852725 Richard Mcenroe

    ‘Zat you, Ms. Behar?

  • dr kill

    I wouldn’t have used quite those words, even if describing your daughter, but I suppose you are essentially correct.

  • Pingback: OH PLEASE! Robert Stacy McCain: Levi Johnson Seduced (or Raped) Bristol Palin « Political Byline

  • Pingback: Pathetic Neurotic Hags And Their Allies « The Camp Of The Saints

  • http://912member.blogspot.com just a conservative girl

    Why does she feel the need to answer these things? Seriously, who takes Cho or Griffen all that seriously anyway?

  • Anonymous

    -Man! You’ve been on fire lately…
    Quoted from and Linked to at:
    Pathetic Neurotic Hags And Their Allies

    -Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin toil in the fields of comedy, but they are not funny. Real, overwrought anger is not funny except to other neurotics. That is why their fan base consists of Feminists and homosexuals — the poster girls and boys for frenzied neuroses.

  • Jack Okie

    Because they’re trying to set the meme, and not pushing back let’s them get away with it. Look at what happened to W.

  • Fran

    I am so discouraged to see the factual mistakes in your article about a story I have followed so closely, including watching every espisode of Dancing With the Stars this year, reading all blogs etc. I am discouraged because I wonder if you make similar mistakes in other stories I haven’t had the time to follow in great detail. However, one thing you seem to miss, is that the interest remains in Bristol Palin. The only way people like Cho or even Jennifer Grey get noticed is by talking about Bristol. Her fans on FB are over 35,000 and growing and Bristol is the ‘buzz’ in every interview. Its too soon to make assumptions about this Cinderella Story as you do in your article. However Bristol does have a compelling narrative. I hope she writes a book about what happened this year on Dancing…her hard work, the political scapegoating, etc. Maybe you could find someone to help her.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Chuck-Coffer/1296650908 Chuck Coffer

    If you think Bristol Palin is fat, you are either a gay man or an ugly woman.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Chuck-Coffer/1296650908 Chuck Coffer

    Both?

  • The Wondering Jew

    Stacy, you’ve been on fire as of late. This is just another piece of great commentary. Actually, I just looked up at Bob Belvedere, who literally said the exact same thing.

    Keep up the great work.

    And as someone who has positive, but decidedly mixed feelings about Sarah Palin, I’m beginning to think more and more that we need a knock-down drag-out fight of the sort she would give us.

    I just got back from D.C. after spending a few days with the beltway GOP Mandarins, and I’ve got to say that within the GOP, Palin has all of the right enemies. I’m certainly going to pull for her over any of the establishment choices (I’m talking about you Mitt Rommney)

  • http://pointofagun.blogspot.com/ Dave C

    Not sure what you said here but if it’s anything like what you said at your blog, you’re an idiot.

    Cordially.

  • http://pointofagun.blogspot.com/ Dave C

    What I’m saying is there is a much, much better way to say what you said without letting your hate get in the way..

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=615281575 Bill Hedrick

    See, I look at pictures of her and see a fine looking young woman. Only in the eyes of neurotic self-hating bulimics would she be considered fat. I am also glad that she had the good sense to NOT marry Levi, that would have compounded the mistake, unless he went hunting with Todd and had an “accident.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/marlena.costner Marlena Costner

    Not that is funny! Very well done, Chuck!

  • Anonymous

    It was pretty vile, Dave. You didn’t miss anything.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/EU5DQWQTTHTPO4A4ZYSL3AAV2U Adjoran

    Limbaugh said it years ago in response to the charge that Clinton had made him rich. He noted that most of his audience growth had occurred during the GHWB Administration, and suggested the reason was it was so much easier to make fun of the left when they are out of power because they get so outrageously stupid. In power, they are just scary.

    Obama is the exception, though – even while implementing terrifyingly destructive policies, he is a laughable buffoon. This will be fodder for many a future dissertation, no doubt.

  • just a conservative girl

    Bristol isn’t a politican.

  • Ino

    With all due respect… I’ve read several comments you’ve posted on other websites. You seem to question decisions made by Sara and/or Bristol Palin. I say let them do as they please. They both have great instincts and I love their fighting spirit.
    If I was a Mike Pence fan, like you seem to be, I’d talk up his record instead of talking down decisions made by his competition or her family. I’m not trying to be mean… this is just what I would do.

  • Rick Patel

    Hags like Margaret Cho & Kathy Griffin lack any semblance of femininity. Sarah Palin is attractive without even trying to be. She is real; they are frauds.

  • http://pointofagun.blogspot.com/ Dave C
  • Alice

    Cho does a bit about Sarah in which she says, “I hate her [Sarah], but, I’d really like to f*&k her.” Violence against women, disguised as sex, regardless of the perpetrator, is way more harmful to women than an occasional negative body image reference.

  • Pingback: dustbury.com » For your size only

  • guest

    Guess polititions kids are game to be attacked and made fun of. Watch out Obama and Clinton. You taught us well how to treat families . LOL

  • just a conservative girl

    I am sorry, but I didn’t mention Sarah Palin at all here. I was talking about Bristol responding to a person who has a very limited audience.

    The people who would take this woman seriously isn’t going to give Bristol’s explanation the time of day.

    The continued attacks on the Palins are going to continue as long as she stays in the spotlight. It isn’t fair, but it is reality. By Bristol answering these types of comments she is giving them more attention than they would have otherwise received.

    I didn’t hear about Cho’s comments until Bristol answered. A gay woman that is far left doesn’t like the Palin’s. That is news? Palin correctly says that her kids should be off limits. By answering these types of attacks, Bristol is raising her own public profile, which in turn will make her a bigger target.

  • Anonymous

    That was Patrick who runs the vile site Political Byline. He’s a complete and utter pathetic loser.

  • Anonymous

    TWJ: I starting to believe like you and Professor Jacobson – let’s have a balls-to-the-wall, End-Of-Days-like battle.

    WOLVERINES!

  • John Doe of Smash Mouth

    Just a conservative girl, you smuck! Yeah, just allow people to attack you, over and over again. That worked so well for GWB. Not.

  • John Doe of Smash Mouth

    Er, that should be “schmuck,” before the spelling Nazi’s chime in.

  • Anonymous

    Ah, I see. Maybe next time I’ll just roundfile the whole comment, then.

  • Mr.Mike

    The hate comes from Bristol’s unflagging support for her mother, and her “conservative preachings. Sarah Palin spends her days criticizing Democrats but then responds like a cornered animal when she is in turn criticized for any of her numerous, and let’s be honest- lack of any real- political-knowledge-proving Faux paus. Quite simply, millionaire “Soccer-Mom” Palin is the worlds biggest phony, that gets a pass on EVERYTHING from her small contingent of followers. Oddly, the same tolerance isn’t afforded to targets of her denunciations.

  • Pingback: Sarah Palin Makes Some Liberals Act Like Weirdos | Parcbench

  • Pingback: You’ll Never Forgive Me for This : The Other McCain

  • Anonymous

    Griffin has dug herself into a deep hole . . .

    Please, don’t ever use the word “hole” in a sentence about Kathy Griffin. There’s not enough brain-bleach in the world to erase that mental image.

  • Pingback: Sarah Palin Makes Liberals Act Like Weirdos « The Greenroom

  • Pingback: Sarah Palin Makes Liberals Act Like Weirdos « The Minority Report

  • Pingback: Sarah Palin Makes Liberals Act Like Weirdos | Parcbench

Performance Optimization WordPress Plugins by W3 EDGE