Friday, April 15, 2011

Someone Else Thinks Trig is not Sarah Palin's Child

And it is not some asshole on the internet. Way back in 2008, I wrote a blog post outlining why Trig is not her baby.

The story disappeared because:
1) The McCain Campaign announced that Bristle was pregnant and that family was off the table
2) The demicrates were to spinless to fight brither bullshit with a real story.

Now Professor Bradford Scharlott of Northern Kentucky University has published an academic article about the story and the media's lack of giving-a shit. From Gawker:

And Scharlott concludes that, given that this hoax would be a massive fraud perpetrated on the entire country by a vice-presidential candidate, the media absolutely should have pursued the story more aggressively.


You can read the full text of "Palin, the Press, and the Fake Pregnancy Rumor:Did a Spiral of Silence Shut Down the Story?" on Scribd.

5 comments:

Roscoe said...

Trying to pin this down won't end well...

Not that it shouldn't be discussed, but... just.. that it won't end well.

_J_ said...

"So the question is important because, if Palin has lied about the pregnancy, it says a lot about her character, her fitness for the presidency, and maybe even her mental health." (p.8)

Trig-Gate is juvenile and needless.

It is highly probable that Trig is not Palin’s baby. A basic grasp of human gestation and calendars evidences this. But the only justification one can give for pursuing this story is that it brings into question Palin’s character. I may be going out on a limb here, but I am fairly certain that there are far more pertinent and important issues concerning Palin’s character that the question of what has or has not emerged from her cunt.

Palin has plenty of flaws of more meaningful consequence than her fucking downy baby. Of course it is crazy that she would pretend to be the mother of Trig. But attacking Palin on this issue makes the attacker seem equally crazy.

Let’s question Palin’s intelligence, competence, knowledge. Let’s attack her inability to articulate nuanced positions. Because then we, as knowledgeable persons, seem reasonable since our concern is for reasonable issues.

If you want to demand that Palin take a maternity test to prove that she is Trig’s mother then, sure, go ahead.

But don’t be surprised when people think you are just as nuts as Palin.

_J_ said...

"I might add that the spiral of silence phenomenon has certainly been evident in my personal life. I used to avoid telling people my views about the Trig hoax rumor because I have literally been subjected to comments like “Shouldn’t you be wearing a tin hat.” So this paper is an effort to stop the spiral."

Translation:
"People think I am crazy for pursuing this topic. So I decided to write an academic paper about this topic in order to prove that I am not obsessed and crazy."

Mission Accomplished, asshat.

_J_ said...

Also, here is a helpful rule of thumb: If your paper utilizes the results of surveys to help enforce your thesis, then you are not doing anything remotely academic or scholarly.

Because surveys are in no way academic, scholarly, or meaningful.

Roscoe said...

I dunno if it's juvenile and needless.. I mean, Palin's positions on related issues make it at least germane to discussion..

I'm just saying that looking into it, raising it as a worthy of inquiry will strengthen her base, seeing her under "attack".