The MSM are now treating Levi Johnston with their trade-marked breezy dismissal as a publicity whore. He sure is. Good on him. When you have been used by a political machine - when they made you cut off your mullet to make-over your image - you get a chance in America to make a few bucks by making yourself over. That means, of course, that we should be highly skeptical of what he is now saying. But in the Vanity Fair interview, which I noted a week ago, Levi nonetheless said something truly remarkable that really does get at something awry about the MSM, John McCain and the Republican machine:
Sarah told me she had a great idea: we would keep it a secretnobody would know that Bristol was pregnant. She told me that once Bristol had the baby she and Todd would adopt him. That way, she said, Bristol and I didn’t have to worry about anything. Sarah kept mentioning this plan. She was naggingshe wouldn’t give up. She would say, “So, are you gonna let me adopt him?” We both kept telling her we were definitely not going to let her adopt the baby. I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn’t want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid.
This is a first-hand account from someone as close to Palin as possible. It alleges a proposed conspiracy by the former vice-presidential candidate to hide her daughter's pregnancy and pass it off as her own to avoid embarrassment. It was not, according to Levi, a one-off musing. It was a persistent nagging to present a massive lie to the world about Palin's own family life for cynical political purposes.
Does the fact that the father of Palin's grandson believes she is capable of a totally crazy conspiracy involving a fake pregnancy ring any bells? Is anyone in the MSM going to actually, you know, ask former governor Palin if this is true, and if it was the first and only time she had this kind of kooky Desperate Housewives scheme up her sleeve?
And where are the conservative commentators denouncing Levi as nuts and batshit and loony and out of bounds and outrageous and hate-filled as they did when a handful of bloggers, armed only with a completely implausible scenario about a pregnancy, asked simply for confirmation of Palin's maternity of her child, confirmation they never got.
And how would you pull off such a conspiracy anyway? Where would you find a doctor to fake a birth certificate? How would you persuade Bristol and Levi to go along with it? How would you find a hospital pliant enough to pull a bait-and-switch? How would you make yourself appear pregnant while your daughter was hidden away - when you are a sitting governor of a state and being photographed around the clock? How would you orchestrate not only a fake pregnancy but a fake birth? Only someone truly unhinged would dream of such a plot. And am I the only one who thinks it matters if this country might have put such an unhinged person in the most powerful office in the world?
That's why clearing up this increasingly surreal set of tabloid stories matters. It's not about Palin. It's about McCain and the GOP. Did they know any of these accusations before they selected her? And how did they get the MSM to acquiesce to no press conference and no questions about this core absurdity? Levi's new claim may be untrue, or a shot across the bow about more to come, or true only in this respect, i.e. Tripp. But if he is telling the truth - and he has been admirably straightforward for much of this psychodrama - then Mrs Palin has some 'splaining to do. And so do Mr McCain and Mr Kristol.