Bristol Palin and her creepy mother

Either I was completely tone deaf prior to the 2008 primary election, or Hillary Clinton's 18-million-votes/cracks-in-the-glass-ceiling got everyone talking about women's issues. Especially women.

I'm not complaining. The XX blog over at Slate is always a good read. Same with Broadsheet at Salon.

What makes me slightly uncomfortable about all these women commenting on the way things are, and with a clear focus on being women and how that affects their view on the world, and how we live in a macho-dominated world, is that it makes me feel like a dick to be a guy, and I am kind of a dick anyway, and I'm white and middle class, so I already feel bad for all the advantages that gives me, and then plus I have to feel bad for being a guy?

It's like: call me an asshole 'cuz I'm an asshole, not 'cuz I have a penis. Or wait, do I even care why I'm an asshole? Maybe I just need to feel like I can not be an asshole eventually, but still be a guy. So maybe that's it.

Anyway, I do enjoy reading about women's issues: right to choose, equal pay for equal work, breast feeding, maternity leave, the new family structure, working mothers, etc., etc.

And this article on Bristol Palin's recent TV appearance on Fox (with Greta Van Susteren) was a terrific read. In her innocence, and like, um, high-school vernacular that still sounds more coherent than her mother, Bristol makes a great argument for not only waiting to have children, but also for safe and effective birth control, and for having the choice between having the child and aborting the fetus (well, you have to extrapolate a bit for that last one).

Then Mama Palin comes in and twists her words and babbles on likes she's known to do and Bristol looks at her like, "Um, this was my interview you attention-starved bitch."

From the Salon article:

And how poignant that the untrained and unrehearsed and inelegant message of the young woman who actually had the baby, the one who said, "I think everyone should just wait 10 years," made far more sense than the politicized jabbering of her elders.

Agreed. She may still have a nut-job mom, but I thought it took the right kind of guts to do what Bristol did: Go on TV and act like a real fucking person. Too bad the interviewer and interview-interrupter have totally lost sight of what it's like. (It doesn't need to be mentioned, but I'll do it anyway: Greta Van Susteren is a Scientologist, which makes her crazy and incapable of being consulted on anything, save space aliens and E-meters).