An Oversight On My Part

I must admit I haven't made much mention of Making Light here on the Gyre. I have come to think it was a severe oversight on my part, and hence I am blogrolling it.

I have just got done reading Teresa Nielsen-Hayden's post about Melanoma and Narcissicism. It is, of course, about John McCain and Sarah Palin. I think Teresa has many good points, but there's one I want to point out. Quotha:

I’m going to bring up a touchy subject: the early reports suggesting that Trigg Palin is the son of Bristol rather than Sarah Palin. That was a nasty episode. Whose fault is that? Sarah Palin’s, first to last. She didn’t give birth to Trigg all alone in a cave. There have to have been multiple witnesses to the labor and birth. None of them could step forward without violating patient privacy. All Sarah Palin had to do was give a couple of them permission to say they’d been there, and that she was the mother.

Now, I have further problems with this whole mess, and I think leftblogistan has a responsibility for the utter depravity with which they slavered over these rumors that cannot be excused by saying Palin should have released her maternity records. That feels too much like victim-blaming to me; but this is problematical because Palin is not a victim:

But she didn’t do that. Why not? IMO, because it made her look like an injured party (she obviously enjoyed that, and got loads of mileage out of it), and drew attention away from the rest of her problems. The other consequence of leaving the story in play was that seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin got dragged through a cubic mile of mud, then paraded in front of the RNC on primetime television as a Moral Example. It’s fatuous to claim it was Bristol’s choice. Even grown men who have the law on their side would think twice before crossing Glorificus Palin; and Bristol is her resourceless minor child.

I agree that Palin is such a narcissist with absolutely no empathy for other people that she would gladly subject her daughter to all this publicity and pawing-over just so she'd look like a martyr.

I suppose that if I had grown up being taught to glorify a martyr, I would jump at my chance to appear as one myself.

Let me borrow an image from the McCain campaign: Did you know John McCain was a fighter pilot in Vietnam? No? Not surprising, seeing as the only word linking "McCain" and "Vietnam" is "POW," but the image stands. If we cast President McCain as a fighter pilot, are we reassured that his copilot, the one who helps him fly the plane of state from the back seat, is a spotlight-hogging ham with a martyr complex and a fistful of grudges?

Go, as they say, read the whole thing.