Levi's Remarkable Claim, Ctd

A reader writes:

You’re completely right to keep pointing out the insanity of Sarah Palin and the bizarre reluctance of the MSM to mention it.  But I think you’re theorizing in advance of the evidence with respect to one point.

By my reading of the Vanity Fair piece, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Sarah Palin intended to fake a pregnancy and pass Bristol’s kid off as her own biological kid. Even if you accept Levi’s statement at face value, that only means that she wanted to keep Bristol’s pregnancy secret and then adopt the kid. There’s no reason she couldn’t have acknowledged publicly that the kid was adopted, without saying anything about who the birth parents were.

My reader's interpretation is certainly plausible, and he's right that Levi does not suggest Palin would fake a pregnancy for herself. But I'm not so convinced by the final sentence. If a governor wants to adopt a child, of course she'd have to explain the adoption process a little, and give some reasons for another child. That's the price of public life. My own view is that Palin could get away with quite a lot in Alaska, but she was nowhere near ready for the national stage - and the GOP and the MSM colluded to avoid revealing the depth of her loopiness.

At this point, my concern is less with Palin (just another nutter) than with McCain and the GOP. If they were reckless enough to foist Palin on us without even minimal vetting, and if they could browbeat the media into not asking certain questions out of deference, then we are in a very dangerous situation. The cynicism of the political and the media elite, and their aversion to the truth when it might impede their interests, requires vigilance.

2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan