Howard Kurtz at WaPo:

When the National Enquirer charged that former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards had fathered a “love child,” in tabloid parlance, most mainstream media outlets refused to carry the allegation for eight months. That changed last month when Edwards acknowledged to ABC News that he’d had an extramarital affair with a former campaign aide, Rielle Hunter, but denied that he is the father of her 5-month-old daughter.

This time, Palin emerged as McCain’s vice-presidential pick Friday, the pregnancy tale hit the Internet on Saturday, was trumpeted by the Drudge Report on Sunday and reached mainstream outlets just after noon Monday. Edwards had a former mistress in seclusion who insisted someone else was the father; the soon-to-be-obvious Palin story was within her own family.

Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein press center at Harvard University, says that, as in the Edwards case, the Palin pregnancy story “was untouched until the person involved made a statement. That legitimized it for the traditional media.”

*********

“Once she’s brought her children in as selling points, unfortunately the bad comes in with the good,” says Lisa Bloom, a Court TV anchor. “She’s integrating her mom quality as a key part of her résumé. We didn’t do that in the press; she did that.”

Right.  Nothing at all like Edwards accepting a Father of the Year award.

But blogger Andrew Sullivan, a right-leaning former New Republic editor who supports Barack Obama, pushed the story about the baby, who was born with Down syndrome. Citing unresolved questions and the campaign’s refusal to release the medical records involved, he writes: “The circumstantial evidence for weirdness around this pregnancy is so great that legitimate questions arise — questions anyone with common sense would ask. . . . After all, this baby was a centerpiece of the public case for Palin made by the Republicans.”

As Allah and Ed note in their link from Hot Air Headlines, right-leaning is hardly an apt description of Andrew Sullivan.  Off his rocker, maybe.  “[Q]uestions anyone with common sense would ask”?  Questions only someone with his head rammed so far up his ass he can see his islets of Langerhans if he lights a match might ask is more like it.

The idea that Palin’s having a Down’s Syndrome child is a “centerpiece of the public case for Palin made by the Republicans” is merely libel.  It’s an interesting part of her family situation, and one that indicates her bona fides regarding right to life–a place where she has “absolute moral authority,” and is not merely a “chickenhawk.”  To imagine that McCain came back and said to his war-room, hey, I got a woman with a DOWN’S BABY! demonstrates more about the sick delusions of Andrew and friends than it does about the candidates and their selection process.

What’s clear enough, though, is that these morons (and I realize I’m being unkind to the good sort found at Ace’s) have shown that, without a doubt, the Palins have more integrity in one of their toenails than the rabble of nattering mental midgets who went trying to pry into their family’s vaginas with torches and pitchforks aloft.  How disgustingly warped and anti-feminist is that?  And to repeat the question, who are the retarded infants in this scenario?

And how does it make McCain appear by contrast that he was willing to take Palin despite her daughter being pregnant, as though that were something that ought to have disqualified her?  It makes him seem like a decent and reasonable person.  I’ll tell you what, Andrew: the fact that you’ve become such a disgusting, perverted, simpering, repugnant sack of shit doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on your family, but it certainly does on your supporters.  Amateurish gynecological spelunking doesn’t become you.

From Ruth Marcus at the same paper comes “The Lesson of Bristol Palin,” which, Marcus claims, is that kids ought to be given more sex education, and that it was a terrible thing for Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign to subject her to the scrutiny that inevitably must follow from having one’s parent become a candidate.  I bring away a different lesson entirely.  Shit happens, and when it happens we must take responsibility for it and carry on as best we can, and not let it deflect us from our goals more than it has to.  Because to suggest, as Marcus does, that such a family situation involving a choice not made by the principal ought to prevent a politician from pursuing higher office is tantamount to stating that the parent must take the blame and should be too ashamed to bring herself forward.  And it elicits the question: would the same be true if the parent were a man?

I wonder, Ruth Marcus, how many times a girl has been compelled to terminate a pregnancy by a parent who was running for office?  That would make a fascinating research topic, wouldn’t it?

And you will undoubtedly think that Christians embracing them for carrying forward as they have is an index of hypocrisy, when all you need do for a fine education on that topic (since you are so fond of “teachable moments”) is look in the mirror, you sneering cunt.

More: Here’s Lorge Jackoff regarding the “political mind”:

The Democratic responses so far reflect external realities: she is inexperienced, knowing little or nothing about foreign policy or national issues; she is really an anti-feminist, wanting the government to enter women’s lives to block abortion, but not wanting the government to guarantee equal pay for equal work, or provide adequate child health coverage, or child care, or early childhood education; she shills for the oil and gas industry on drilling; she denies the scientific truths of global warming and evolution; she misuses her political authority; she opposes sex education and her daughter is pregnant; and, rather than being a maverick, she is on the whole a radical right-wing ideologue.

All true, so far as we can tell.

But such truths may nonetheless be largely irrelevant to this campaign. That is the lesson Democrats must learn. They must learn the reality of the political mind.

So, see?  Appearances really are reality.  And what does that mean?  Why it means that one is entitled to do whatever is necessary, no matter how untruthful or ugly it may be, to instantiate one’s version of reality.  That is to say:

122. What many here don’t understand. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. RUMOR IS TRUTH.

The modern laws of media hype and political warfare have a useful tenet:

Repeat ANYTHING or raise false concern over ANYTHING and it is likely to be planted in the conscious/subconscious of many voters.

If people start to think that there might be something fishy with Palin’s last kid (if hers), then that’s FINE. One more doubt (whether tied to reality or not) is another hesitation at the ballot box.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM PEOPLE. The “rising above it” bullshit has served us so well in the past, hasn’t it?

If you have problems with the story, then STFU and get out of the way of Dems who are engaged in MODERN POLITICAL WARFARE. Go tend your garden or some other pedestrian task, because the “concern trolls” are not helping shape the message.

J

That’s some pretty sophisticated sophistry, there, Prof. Jackoff.  Does it in any way explain the strange mental contortions of the “reality based”?  All of that is true, so far as you can tell?  You have no interest in the truth, Lorge.  Jackoff.  May I call you Lorge?

One more thing: Comments are turned on but seem not to be working here, so I’m creating a dummy post above where you can comment.  That didn’t work, either.  Sorry.  I’ve emailed Jeff.

More more:  Pool for what day Palin drops out. Hahahaha, good one, Jeralyn! Keep trying, though, because you’re creating a pushback tsunami.

UPDATE: From LGF, via Ed Morrissey, news that the Trig is Bristol’s baby poster ArcXIX has been disappeared in his entirety from Kos.