Sarah Palin and the possible faked pregnancy

God says we need to avoid gossip.

I want to avoid gossip.

It is wise to beware of rumors. "Don't believe everything you hear." Absolutely. But/and . . . isn't there a place where you need to investigate "your own side" in the same way you would investigate "the other side"?

I have found it so common: advocates for any particular position are happy to investigate virtually every rumor or whisper of malfeasance that has to do with "the opposition." They say such investigations are necessary to "get at the truth" and/or to build any sense of possible confidence in anything "the opposition" has to say.

But when it comes to "their own," if someone raises questions, their hackles rise in high dudgeon: "How dare you ask such things!"

I ask, "But what if these things are true? Shouldn't we know that?"

So I set off to find out if, and to what extent, there may be any validity to the rumor that Sarah Palin did not bear Trig, the son she now claims as her own.

And I will say, she looks bad either way: whether she bore Trig or not. She appears either to be a liar (for "a good cause," no doubt: to save her daughter's dignity), or she lacks discernment (why else would she put her baby's life at risk?), or, perhaps, despite her avowed commitment to life, she had a secret death-wish for her son.

Truly.

I find any one of these options rather disturbing for someone who intends to run our country. I want the highest ethics. And I'm afraid we're not finding them.

But I'll let you be the judge.

Having had two daughters bear children within the past five weeks, I find it impossible to believe as a completely factual account what the press reported concerning Trig's birth:

• Mrs. Palin made a keynote luncheon address at the Republican Governor’s Energy Conference in Texas on April 17, after she noticed she had begun to leak amniotic fluid.
• She then proceeded to the airport where she took a regularly-scheduled, eight-hour commercial flight back up to Anchorage.
• Rather than having the baby in Anchorage, the state capital and the largest city in the state, she then proceeded to drive 44 miles from the Anchorage airport to the 74-bed Mat-Su Regional Medical Center located in a community with not even a fifth the population.
• An hour later, she checked in with her doctor.

And then, finally,

• Seven hours later, she had the baby.

Is this really what you would do if you had a Down syndrome baby? Is this what you would do if you had any kind of baby?

Hate to say it, but I'm skeptical.

For further discussion, see the comments at the end of the original article that brought this to my attention.

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ETA (9/2/08): Reliable sources now report that Mrs. Palin's 17-year-old daughter is currently pregnant and expecting to give birth in December. So the pregnancy was not faked.

But now mom/Mrs. Prospective Vice President has two major "distractions" on her hands in the form of a very young, Down syndrome baby and an unmarried daughter who is pregnant. How can she keep up every end of all the jobs she's being called upon to fulfill?

• Wife
• Mom
• Governor of Alaska
• Vice Presidential Candidate
• Human being

Will she be able to succeed where few--very few (any?)--men do?