Palin continues exploiting her children

                       Palin with baby Trig

After former Governor Sarah Palin demanded that the media “quit makin’ stuff up” in honor of America’s troops, would it have been too much to ask that Palin quit makin’ stuff up herself?
Apparently so. In what appears to be an attention-starved celebrity’s attempt to get the spotlight back on her, Palin used her Facebook page to post an anti-health care reform message:
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
It’s interesting that Palin should put the terms “death panel” and “level of productivity in society” in quotes, as if to suggest that she’s referencing the health care reform bill or some other real source of information on the bill. In fact, there is no reference to either such concept in the bill.
Most news outlets have already thoroughly debunked her main claim, so this article is going to look at this story from a different angle: When will Sarah stop using her children as political props?
Bristol Palin was the first to be thrust onto the national stage when her mother was tapped as the Republican Vice Presidential pick for the 2008 race. It soon became clear that Bristol was pregnant and at odds with her mother’s “abstinence-only” rhetoric. Rather than owning her mistake and learning from it, Palin dogmatically stuck to her position and instead announced that her teenage daughter was going to marry the baby’s father. Unsurprisingly, the engagement didn’t last and Bristol is now an “abstinence ambassador” caught in an awkward position. She must encourage young women to remain virgins until they marry so that they don't face the terrible fate of teenage motherhood while maintaining that having a baby at the age of 17 was a blessing and baby Tripp is a wonderful gift.
The next Palin child to be exploited was Willow. Everybody remembers the David Letterman debacle, whether they like it or not. Letterman took aim at Sarah, who was in New York for a fundraiser with her daughter. Letterman joked: “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee game, during the seventh inning, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.”  The joke was obviously meant for Bristol, but was accidentally aimed at Willow. No matter: Sarah made a minor non-issue into a non-issue covered by the national media, culminating in a “Fire David Letterman” rally outside his New York studio after Letterman apologized for the joke.
All this went on while Palin gained street cred by bragging about her son Track's military service. It seems that Piper is the only Palin child who hasn't yet been used as a tool to advance Mom's career. Given how extreme Sarah's positions have become of late, Piper has good reason to be worried about what her mom has planned for her.
Which brings us to Trig. Already having had his share of attention due to whisperings that the baby was actually Bristol’s, not Sarah’s, you’d think that Sarah would have the good sense to leave this kid alone for a while. Instead of exercising sense, Sarah hypocritically claimed that a public health-care option would kill her baby.
Why hypocritically? Because if Sarah were really concerned about the health and welfare of her child, she’d be first in line to reform America’s health care system. People with Down syndrome aren’t likely to get the health insurance they need, due to those pesky rules about “pre-existing conditions.” Just as Palin’s apathy on the subject of making rape victims pay for their own rape kits made us question her feminist credentials, here her endorsement of for-profit health care makes us question her sincerity about providing health care to the less powerful among us. In the end, though, Sarah has nothing to worry about; I’m sure that her $11 million book deal in addition to the government-sponsored health care she had as governor will take very good care of her and her family.