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This is a guest post from Abigail Pilgrim, a writer in Washington, D.C. Welcome!
Samantha, were you really expecting that she was going to present some kind of five-step plan outlining the "details of abstinence or safe sex"? And Susannah, do you call her "astonishingly dim" because she got pregnant, because she's not as articulate as Obama, or what?
I personally loved Bristol's interview, not because she came across as a polished poster girl but because she presented some of the real feelings and questions that can too often go missing from the teen pregnancy debate. I didn't find anything immature about her sitting down with her parents and feeling terrified. But maybe it was just me and Bristol that have ever had that so-sick-I-can-barely-talk-but-I-know-I-have-to-tell-you feeling with my parents. I hope those kinds of confrontations happen more often than the cases that my sister (who's a nurse) tells me about of the teenage girls who show up at the hospital, find out they're pregnant, and then refuse to let the nurses inform their parents before they get an abortion. Speaking of which, does anyone else think it's crazy that girls get reproductive rights before they get their learner's permits? Are you really prepared to choose whether or not to have a baby if you're not even capable of choosing whether or not to change lanes on I-495? It's insane to me.
The main takeaway I had from Bristol's interview is that there's something twisted when culture is practically doing everything it can to encourage teens to have sex, but then when they do and someone gets pregnant, we all act completely horrified because they're obviously unprepared to be a parent.
Everyone seems to agree that she made a mistake. But what was her mistake? Was it the sex part, the getting pregnant part, the having the baby part, or maybe just the choosing to do an interview on national TV part?
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I'm afraid I have to agree that on the vapid-to-moving continuum, I’d put Bristol Palin’s interview a lot closer to the vapid side of the spectrum. It wasn’t just the likes and the ums; that’s standard-issue and I do it, too. But I don’t understand how someone who clearly wants to take on an advocacy role has given no thought at all to what it is she wants to advocate. As several of you have already noted, “wait 10 years” and “abstinence is not realistic” is just not a public service message. It’s confusing, if not totally contradictory. Now I don’t think I agree, Willa, that this is attention-seeking or career-planning on her part. Bristol mostly looks like she’d rather be pulling a dogsled through the tundra than giving this interview. I think she really does want her life to be an example to other teens. But since she doesn’t seem to know what her message is, the net effect seems to be completely unrealistic and chaotic. (“I take care of him all the time except when I’m at school"?!). And Gov. Palin’s glossy observation—that having a baby at 18 is very unfortunate but also very fortunate—only contributes to the sense that the only message here is: “Don’t do what I did. Unless you do.”
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Jessica wondered earlier why Bristol Palin would agree to do an interview at all, now that the feeding frenzy is largely over, and posited Bristol's telling her overbearing mama to step off. I buy that, but I think there's an even simpler reason she might have decided to sit down with Greta: She wants the attention. Bristol mentions a number of times that having a baby isn't at all "glamorous." That doesn't sound like news, but I think it might have been to Bristol. She repeats the insight a number of times, enough for it to seem like one of her big revelations about having a newborn. (It's also a nod to the insidious power of the same tabloids that Bristol dismisses as trash. Where else would one get the idea that glamour has anything to do with child-rearing except from watching the likes of Ashlee Simpson, Gwen Stefani, and Angelina do it in $500 dollar jeans?) Greta Van Susteren may not be glamorous like Vogue, but she's chic-er than nothing (or what most 18-year old mothers have access to).
I was also struck by how often Bristol talked about how having a career would make raising a baby easier. Keeping herself in the public eye is a pretty savvy, if yucky, career strategy. Being notorious has already proved to be a viable career option for some. If Bristol seems unlikely to follow in Paris' exact footsteps, she can at least use her fame as a springboard to something else, be it advocacy or handbags. But she's got to extend her 15 minutes in order for that move to work.
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My reaction to Bristol Palin's interview with Greta Van Susteren falls somewhere between Hanna's "most honest and moving political interview" and Susannah's "mind-bogglingly vapid." Among the "ums" and the "likes" and the teen-speak—being a new mom is "awesome"—are a few moments of stunning honesty—telling her parents about her pregnancy was "harder than labor," for example. (Funny, to me, is that if this was a giant f-you to her mother, why she was so adamant to insist that having Tripp was her choice and not something her mother forced on her in the name of political expediency?) But mostly, she struck me as an average 18-year-old who is dealing with the pressures of unexpected motherhood. And yet so many are piling on.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Web, we’re either supposed to
celebrate or sympathize with, I’m still not sure, Lauren B., who has an essay
on Nerve.com about the crimp that her abortion put on her relationships with
men. Her story starts with her telling a man on their second date—and third
drink that evening—that she’d had an abortion the month before. She told the
first guy she dated seriously post-abortion about it on New Year’s Day because
she was “too out-of-control wasted” (and later complained that he insisted on
using condoms even though she was on the pill). Mixed in are the account of a
friend who got pregnant after a night of heavy drinking, and insults directed
toward abortion protesters and “teenagers in Utah practicing the pray-to-God-and-please-come-on-my-ass
method.” All this from a woman in her mid-20s who really, it turns out, just
wanted someone to be able to laugh with her about her abortion. Is this really
how the pro-choice movement presents itself? I feel about as sorry for her as I
did for Amy Richards, who gained notoriety for a New York Times Magazine essay
about how she’d aborted two of her three fetuses when pregnant with triplets
because otherwise “I'm going to have to move to Staten
Island. … I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying
big jars of mayonnaise.”
Maybe Bristol Palin shouldn't be a poster child for teenage
pregnancy. But she's doing more for the pro-life argument than a bunch of
narcissistic twentysomethings who get abortions because they're drunk and
forgot their birth control are doing for the pro-choice side.
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I am really enjoying the Bristol Palin discussion, and hesitate to change the subject. I'm also a document nerd, though, so I'm fascinated by the Consumerist.com blowup over Facebook's latest iteration of its Terms of Use. On Feb. 4, the social network dropped a sentence in their service agreement that stated each member "may remove your User Content from the Site at any time." Two weeks later, the consumer blog interpreted Facebook saying, "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever," and at least three new Facebook groups were instantly formed demanding control of data be returned to users.
Now I love the Consumerist, a cheeky Web presence from Consumer's Union, publisher of the reliably survey- and chart-happy Consumer Reports. Recently, I wanted another look at the service representative training manual I was schooled on at my first full time job at Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, circa 1968. The helpful Consumerist had a leaked version circa 2007 which was remarkably similar to the one I learned from 40 years ago. But on the data-control dispute, my sympathies are with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. After the Consumerist story and member protests, Zuckerberg worried on his blog that while "[p]eople want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time," that door is not so easily locked. The Facebook founder could only offer weakly, "in the development of the open online world ... these issues are being worked out."
At my long ago phone company job, when dealing with the public, we were trained to: "Attempt to identify and resolve the root cause of the issue. Empathize with the customer. Listen attentively to the customer's complaint and do not interrupt." We also learned early on, "If the customer is insistent on contacting an outside agency or an executive, immediately refer the customer to a Manager." At 19 years old, this was a valuable part of my education.
My more lasting impression from that job was that an individual's transactions and communications with institutions are rarely private. In the interest of customer service, my co-workers and I regularly poked around in installation and billing records and had ready access to non-published phone numbers. Although generally protected from dissemination, our personal information is typically not secret. (Deep and very personal secrets are, though usually anonymized, also public lately, but that deserves to be the topic of another post.) The closest we come to privacy, is what academics call "practical obscurity." Every day others have access to our banking, job performance, grades, medical records, magazine subscription histories, and yes, e-mail, text, and Facebook posts but, for the most part, our personal documents are of no special interest to the folks who review, analyze, crunch, or transmit them.
Now, given that he recently agreed to pay $65 million to a trio of upper classman who briefly employed the Harvard wiz kid then claimed he stole their source code, design, and business plan, Mark Zuckerberg may not be the most trustworthy of stewards for our collective socialization data. He has, however, for better or worse, produced a virtual gathering of friends, family and colleagues that is far more pertinent and entertaining than the White Pages or desktop rolodexes I used to collect. For that, I will happily forgo lifetime control over my status updates.
If we are worried about cyber stalkers, snoops, or helicopter mothers, a Facebook spokesman pointed out obliquely to the Industry Standard, it might also help to adjust our privacy settings.
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I thought Bristol Palin came off as astonishingly dim and mind-bogglingly vapid. She reminded me of the random young women that show up on MTV's True Life documentary series, saddled at too young of an age with children they are neither psychologically nor financially able to take care of. I agree with Jessica that the interview seemed more like a f-you to her mother than anything else. When Sarah Palin showed up at one point, it looked as if she could barely contain her desire to climb across the table and throttle Bristol for having agreed to this ... interview? While watching "news" as substantive as cotton candy that made me wonder if it induced IQ point loss, I was most embarrassed for (by? on behalf of?) Greta Van Susteren, an obviously intelligent woman who for reasons beyond my comprehension has lowered herself to political coverage that has more in common with an E! Miley Cyrus profile than whatever this was supposed to be. My favorite Bristol sound bite: "Everyone should be abstinent or whatever." Whatever, indeed.
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I agree with Hanna that Bristol came off as remarkably unaffected in her Fox interview. But that still doesn't explain why she felt compelled to do this interview in the first place. Why now, since the media lost interest in badgering Bristol months ago? It didn't seem like Bristol was positioning herself as the poster girl for teen screw-ups, or any sort of poster girl at all. The interview read more like an attempt to gain agency over the situation. Bristol was thrust into the spotlight mostly against her will, and I saw this interview as a tacit f-you to her mother. When Bristol told Greta Van Susteren that she neglected to inform Sarah about the interview until the day before, she looked pretty darn pleased with herself. And you know, I can't say I blame her. Being the unwitting centerpiece of a three-ring media circus when you're several months pregnant would make any normal teenager—or even grown woman—pretty resentful.
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Hanna, that's interesting that we had such different reads on the Bristol Palin interview. I agree that she was refreshingly honest in her shock about being a mom, but I hardly saw her as a poster girl. Her refusal to talk about the details of abstinence or safe sex—or, for that matter, to have been the one to tell her parents she was pregnant—struck me as immature, not endearing. My mom's golden rule of sexual activity was always that if you're not able to talk about it, you shouldn't be doing it. It's admirable how well Bristol's soldiering through her unexpected hardship (and lucky, as Gov. Palin told Greta Van Susteren, that she has such a huge, supportive family to help her through it). But if I got to hold an audition for my ideal teenage screw-up poster girl, I would make sure she could say words like condoms and sex, instead of coyly talking around the acts and choices that accounted for her screw-up in the first place.
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Sam, I found that Bristol interview one of the most honest and moving political interviews I've ever seen, if we can call it a political interview. And it would have been totally ruined for me if she had pulled out some party line abstinence stats, or some church agitprop, or whatever half-baked policy solutions she's now dreamed up. She seemed utterly shell-shocked and nervous and humbled, even before the ever-friendly Greta Van Susteren. She described telling her parents about the pregnancy as being like a scene from Juno, with her so "sick to my stomach" that her best friend had to say the words for her. It's clear that she's freaked out and not at all ready to be a mom ("I wish it had happened in 10 years"), but also clear that she won't drop the ball. She was very endearing, I thought, and a real poster girl for teenage screw-up.
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I just discovered that About Last Night, the much-watered-down, mediocre, 1980s film version of the David Mamet play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, is available to "Watch Now" on Netflix (Reihan Salam reviewed this Netflix capability for Slate last year). It stars Demi Moore and a dewily beautiful Rob Lowe as a twosome who hook up, shack up, break up and get all confuddled about love, sex, and commitment in the process. It is, as stated previously, truly mediocre, if not downright terrible. I love it. It belongs to a category of film that brings me great joy: bad movies I love to watch on television.
These are the movies that, when you discover they're on while channel surfing, make you immediately think "Score! I know what I'm doing for the next two hours!" For me, fully great movies never elicit quite such a tickled response—maybe because commercials actually ruin them, or I feel as though they deserve my full attention: The Cutting Edge does not ask this of me (it asks only that I believe in the physical possibility of the Pamchenko twist). Neither does You've Got Mail, Dirty Dancing, Twister, The American President, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Sweetest Thing, or Soapdish, just some of the films mentioned to (and by) me while I conducted a highly unscientific survey on this subject. (What other movies fit the bill? There must be scores)
Given my feelings for About Last Night and the fact that it is rarely on TV anymore (Rob Lowe's glory days are, alas, long behind him), you'd think I'd be psyched to learn it is now, thanks to Netflix, available to me instantaneously, 100 percent of the time. I am not.
It turns out bad movies I love to watch on television are not as enjoyable when they are bad movies I can watch whenever I want. Infinite access transforms About Last Night from a surprise treat (look at what WPIX has for me today!) into what it is: a lame movie I am willfully choosing to waste my Saturday afternoon on. Without a cable channel picking my favorite bad movie for me, I feel like I should select something better, a different film or maybe, I dunno, an outdoor activity. This is why, though I now have The Cutting Edge on my DVR, I've only ever watched it when it turned up randomly on some Tuesday night. Sometimes, having all the control really takes the fun out of a thing.
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Bristol Palin spoke to Fox News' Greta Van Susteren about life as an 18-year-old mom. She looks beautiful (what cheekbones!) but nervous, her eyes darting as she delivers clipped responses—far from the rambling poetry of now-Grandma Palin. It's unclear why Bristol agreed to the interview (which, in true maverick fashion, she didn't tell her mom about until the day before). She doesn't seem to have any clear message she's out to deliver, and her thoughts on teen pregnancy—ostensibly one of the topics of the interview—are frustratingly vague:
I wish [getting pregnant] would happen in like 10 years so I could have a job and an education and be, like, prepared and have my own house and stuff. ... I hope that people learn from my story and just, I dunno, prevent teen pregnancy I guess."
Right. But prevent it how? And wait 10 years for what? To have sex? Or just wait to get pregnant, by, you know, using birth control? Bristol "doesn't want to get into detail about that," but says she thinks expecting abstinence is "not realistic at all." Van Susteren doesn't probe, and in a second clip featuring Gov. Sarah Palin, we find out why. Cutting Bristol out of the interview now that the real star is in the room, Van Susteren asks the governor:
Isn't the bigger story or the bigger issue how important it is for families to pitch in? It's not just an issue of abstinence. ... When you have the conversation about abstinence, I almost feel bad because there's this wonderful child here [presumably she means Tripp, not his mother], so talking about abstinence ... it doesn't sound very nice.
Well, it's not always a journalist's job to be nice. If Bristol wants people to learn from her story and to prevent teen pregnancy, as she explicitly said, then Van Susteren owes it to the audience to ask the obvious follow-up: How?
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Aasiya Hassan, a 37-year-old Buffalo woman and mother of two young children who was seeking divorce from her husband, was decapitated by him in at the office of his television station, Bridges TV, which he started in order to "portray Muslims in a more positive light." Police are calling the beheading "the worst form of domestic violence." Indeed. But the president of the New York state chapter of the National Organization for Women said it was more than that: “This was apparently a terroristic version of honor killing, a murder rooted in cultural notions about women’s subordination to men." Phyllis Chessler has a study in the current Middle East Quarterly titled, "Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?" Her emphatic answer is, "No." Read the list of dead Muslim women, many of them daughters brought to the United States or Europe, who embraced the freedom and opportunities of their new countries only to be killed for it by fathers, brothers, and even mothers. Chessler says too often the West averts its gaze from attitudes and behavior in Muslim communities that preceed honor killings—the beatings and forced marriages, for example—out of a misplaced sense of nonjudgmental multiculturalism.