Sarah Palin Baby Hoax?

[sonofajoiner]

Did Sarah Palin Carry Out the Biggest Hoax in American Political History?

Business Insider — An interesting footnote has emerged to a theory that raged around the Internet during Sarah Palin's candidacy for Vice President. The theory is that Sarah Palin is actually the grandmother of her purported son Trig, not the mother, and that she staged a gigantic hoax during the campaign to cover up this fact.

Professor Bradford Scharlott of Northern Kentucky University has looked into this story in detail and written a long academic article about it. He concludes two things: First, that the "conspiracy theory" is likely true—Sarah Palin staged a huge hoax, and, second, the American media is pathetic for not pursuing the story more aggressively.

Scharlott's article walks through all the evidence supporting the theory, including the photos of Palin in what is said to have been a late-stage pregnancy, the leisurely 20-hour trip home that Palin took after she supposedly went into labor in Texas, the refusal of the hospital where Trig was supposedly born to even confirm that he was born there (let alone who was the mother), strange statements from Palin's doctor and the McCain campaign, and so on.

And Scharlott concludes that, given that this hoax would be a massive fraud perpetrated on the entire country by a vice-presidential candidate, the media absolutely should have pursued the story more aggressively.

Because the mainstream media did not—and has not—pursued the story at all (let alone aggressively), Professor Scharlott has done some of the work himself. He has also attempted to explain why the media was so wimpy and gullible during the campaign.

One of Professor Scharlott's theories, interestingly, is that conservatives have been extraordinarily effective at shaming anyone who has even brought up the matter, let alone investigated it. He notes how different this is than the Democrats ability to quell the other conspiracy theory that has obsessed the nation in recent years—the theory that President Obama was born in Kenya.

Given the amount of publicity (and support) presidential candidate Donald Trump has gotten in recent weeks by picking up the Obama-wasn't-born-here mantra, the silence on this other question is indeed startling. The evidence Scharlott's cites about about Palin's possible hoax is by no means conclusive, but it certainly raises as many questions as the logic about Obama's birthplace.

In light of Scharlott's evidence that Palin staged a hoax, as well as the ongoing absence of any proof that Palin is actually Trig's mother, one wonders if the media will now, finally, seek to determine the truth—especially because Palin is considered a candidate for president.

Some of the key points

-The suspicions started with the story the Palins told about how Sarah Palin and her husband behaved after she went into labor while on a trip to Texas. Namely, they took a 20-hour trip home.

-The press release Palin put out announcing Trig's birth did not say where the birth took place. The hospital where Trig was supposedly born did not list him as being among the babies born that day.

-Photos of Palin in the weeks before she gave birth gave no indication that she was pregnant.

-All Palin would have had to do—then and now—to prove that she was Trig's mother was, ironically, produce a birth certificate

-One of the only American journalists who looked into the story, Andrew Sullivan, suggests that we may have witnessed one of the greatest frauds in history.

Some of the supposed evidence of a fraud/hoax seems a little weak IMO, but she certainly doesn't look particularly pregnant in the photos accompanying the article. But then, not all women show particularly (strangely enough Palin parodier Tina Fey recently announced a pregnancy and she is also barely showing at all). And it'd be fairly unusual for a teenage girl (ie Bristol Palin) to give birth to a baby with Downs Syndrome right?

http://gaw.kr/emRsJM

 

[EnolaGaia]

... And it'd be fairly unusual for a teenage girl (ie Bristol Palin) to give birth to a baby with Downs Syndrome right?

Apparently it would not be all that less probable than for a mother in her 20's ...

It's been established that the statistical incidence of Down's Syndrome births increases with the mother's age. According to the (US) National Down Syndrome Society figures posted at:

http://www.ndss.org/index.php?option=co ... &Itemid=78

... this incidence varies from 1 in 2000 (births) at maternal age 20 to 1 in 10 at maternal age 49.

According to this 2007 survey paper published in the Oxford journal _Human Reproduction_:

http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/6/1730.full

... teenage pregnancies (ages 13 - 19) exhibit no increased risk (presumably meaning increased incidence) for Down's Syndrome compared to 'adult pregnancies' (defined as maternal ages of 20 - 34 in this study). This paper lists rates of incidence for the teen age categories versus the 'adult' category in a table at:

http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/conten ... nsion.html

I'm not entirely clear how the 'rate' figures were calculated. The overall DS rate for mothers aged 13 - 19 is '2.64' (per how many of what, I can't tell). The DS rate for the 20 - 34 adult reference group is given as '2.84'.

 

[Zilch5]

...and apparently the father is Obama and the baby was secretly born in Hawaii...or something.

This is all getting a bit silly, isn't it?

 

[rynner2]

It started as early as 2008:

If Mrs Palin, a conservative mother of five, ever doubted that landing on a national presidential ticket would open her to the harshest of spotlights and smear tactics, she also awoke yesterday to utterly unfounded internet rumours that her fifth child, born in April with Down’s Syndrome, was actually her 17-year-old daughter’s.

http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewt ... 100#814100

 

[Anome]

It started as early as 2008:

As the article above said

Business Insider — An interesting footnote has emerged to a theory that raged around the Internet during Sarah Palin's candidacy for Vice President. The theory is that Sarah Palin is actually the grandmother of her purported son Trig, not the mother, and that she staged a gigantic hoax during the campaign to cover up this fact.

 

[Analogue Boy]

This is easily sorted out.
They did a gynaecological examination.
She said she'd never been to Gynaec or had been with anyone from there.

Case closed.

 

[Anome]

Do you have a source for those claims? I'd like to chase them up.

Not doubting you, just want to check the sources.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I thought I'd heard 'em all, but this one is BRAND-NEW to me.

I think politics has moved beyond dirty to Stygian black.

 

[rynner2]

Getting down to the nitty-gritty:

Shame on the Trig-truthers' Sarah Palin hate
The flipside of Obama birtherism is the Trig conspiracy theory about Sarah Palin. Liberals must disown such creepy misogyny
Megan Carpentier guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 April 2011 17.30 BST

At the bitter heart of Trig birtherism, its adherents cling to one major assumption: former Alaska governor Sarah Palin should not be elected to higher office. On that they and, if polls are to be believed, a majority of Americans apparently agree. But from that starting place, it all goes terribly awry. For Trig birthers don't believe that Palin's minimal governing experience, divisive political persona or her array of deeply conservative policy positions on everything from drilling to abortion to equal pay to healthcare should inspire their opposition to her. Rather, they believe that what did – or, in their ill-informed opinion, did not – once emerge from her mysterious and hidden womb should make the rest of us nervous enough to disavow her.

Trig birthers? In the stubbly nether regions of the internet untouched by Occam's razor, a dedicated group of (mostly) men seeks to prove that the Palin family drama is more soap operatic than the family has already acknowledged. That is, they seek to convince the rest of the world that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Sarah Palin wasn't really pregnant in 2007 and 2008, and did not give birth to her son Trig three years ago. Many of them believe Palin's pregnancy was a ruse designed to shield her teenage daughter, Bristol, from the consequences of a teenage pregnancy – conveniently ignoring the fact that Bristol's actual teenage pregnancy culminated in a live full-term birth a mere eight months after her brother Trig was born. Oh, those mysterious lady parts! How do they ever work?

If the best "reason" one can come up with to oppose a national Palin candidacy would have regular soap opera watchers snarking about unbelievable plot lines, then one is just not that interested in politics beyond the "personal destruction" part. Palin's rightwing politics alone ought to be enough for liberals; her "blood libel" video and the defence thereof garnered her a new share of critics among independents; and her political persona – and popularity – is built around appealing to her fan base and not those who are unsure about her. One doesn't even have to debate the issue of her womb to oppose her politically … and yet, some critics continue to insist that, without a full accounting of her gynaecological records, they won't be convinced.

No one is asking for the results of President Obama's prostate exams or his urological records, even if a bunch of nutjobs don't feel that they've seen enough of his birth certificate. No one ran around in 1984 asking to see Geraldine Ferraro's gynaecological records, and it definitely didn't come up during then Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency, even if there were plenty of jabs about her supposed cankles and gossip about the supposed state of her marriage. No, somehow, Sarah Palin has inspired a bunch of nominally liberal men to spend a heck of a lot of time speculating about her female organs, and now they want the records – and let's not kid ourselves about the headlines they'd write if they got them. Gynaecological records aren't just an account of what one's uterus has done, after all – they're also a regular look into one's vagina.

Yes, Palin's most vociferous opponents want to look into her vagina – with a guide, of course, because it's all mysterious and scary. Sarah Palin, apparently, couldn't have just gotten pregnant the way the rest of the world does and she couldn't have delivered a baby the way the rest of the women of the world do. She couldn't have had and recognised a few Braxton Hicks contractions after bearing four children, and gotten on a plane to have the birth of her fifth, special-needs child in her hometown, and had it all be perfectly above board. Nope, it has to be something more mysterious, more nefarious, more … gross. What she's done with her vagina just has to disqualify her from office.

And that's really what Trig birtherism comes down to: misogyny. They can't just oppose her positions or personally dislike her (not that any of the Trig birthers apparently know her personally). No, her very femaleness and what they consider her subversion of it must disqualify her from office. And no firsthand accounts or doctor's statements are going to change their minds that the highly improbable fantasy is more compelling than the mundane truth – not without being able to put their grubby little hands on her private gynaecological records. Though, like Obama birthers, they probably wouldn't be satisfied with those alone, either – unless they found something else in them with which to demonise her.

There are plenty of reasons to disagree with Sarah Palin, plenty of reasons to dislike Sarah Palin's political persona and a plethora of reasons to oppose a potential Palin candidacy in 2012. And while Trig birthers clearly don't suffer from a lack of a certain kind of imagination (one rooted in her identity as a woman and a mother), it's perfectly fair to suggest that they just aren't interesting enough or imaginative enough to come up with any actual good reason for voters to oppose her – which is why they settled on this conspiracy theory. Maybe, when it comes down to it, if this is the most important reason they can come up with why Palin should be disqualified from office, they're actually kind of her biggest fans: they certainly spent more time thinking about her nether regions than seems appropriate. 8)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... epublicans

 

[sonofajoiner]

That guardian article is astonishingly stupid. As far as I understand it, the loudest proponent of this CT has been Andrew Sullivan who, you know, not a 'liberal' and who has repeatedly challenged Palin's political legitimacy not on the grounds that she is a vagina owner, but on the grounds that, amongst other things, she's a moron. In fact various 'liberal' blogs and media outlets have challenged the 'baby hoax' claim (for example
http://huff.to/kHA6wA and http://bit.ly/e3VQhy).

And, as is mentioned in the comments over at CIF, barely any one cares whether Trig is Palin's son or not. It has nothing like the traction amongst the media that the similarly mental Obama/birther CT has. I believe recent opinion polls show Palin's popularity amongst republican supporters has waned significantly (having found an even less mentally competent messiah in the form of Donald Trump it would seem) so to claim that vast swathes of the political left are obsessed with taking her down by thoroughly investigating the woman's swimsuit area is, quite frankly, insane.

 

[rynner2]

That guardian article is astonishingly stupid.

I think it was intended as irony, to be fair.

Probably the best way to treat Obama birthers and Trig conspiracists, as they don't appear to understand logic or the need for consistent facts and theories.