When someone puts themselves out there as a pinnacle of piety....

[FLAprogressive]

...you bet that their personal life matters.

What Sarah Palin did with her body would be her own business, except for the fact that she tells other people what to do with their own bodies. So, it's news. End of story.

[tblue37]

1. AND she pushes abstinence only sex education, which ends up ruining young

women's lives.

[FLAprogressive]

2. Exactly. This is why she is fair game.

[RZM]

3. Isn't sex ed for kids though? She was 23 at the time of this encounter

*On edit*

I'm not denying there's some hypocrisy there btw. I guess I just don't care about it because it was 24 years ago. Obama's justice department prosecutes drug cases (which I disagree with). But I don't really care that he did cocaine when he was younger. Now if he were chopping lines on his oval office desk, that would be a different story. But what people did half their lives ago really doesn't matter much to me.

[Whiskeytide]

8. But...

... If Obama made being drug free and drug abstinence a focal point in his present platform, I might have a problem over it, though.

I didn't have a real problem with Clinton's indiscretions because he never publicly portrayed himself as an over-the-top family values, faithful to my wife kind of guy (I know he should have been that kind of person none-the-less, but it wasn't his public persona shtick). What he did was stupid, and a betrayal to his family, but it wasn't publicly hypocritical. Compare to Gingrich, who did precisely what Clinton did, but looked down his nose at Clinton and portrayed himself as the second coming of Ward Beaver. That's public hypocrisy. And I think its both funny and scary. And certainly relevant.

[tblue37]

9. Yes, of course, but this is a woman who had her own sexual escapades as a young woman.

She obviously knows from her own experience and that of her daughter that young people WILL have sex, and that doing so without protection is a recipe for STDs and unwanted pregnancies (for which she also would ban abortions).

She KNOWS that abstinence only education doesn't work, but she hops on that bandwagon anyway becuase it pleases the people she is grifting--the fundamentalist base.

The same issue comes up with Bristol Palin, who has a child born from her own tteenage sexual escapades, but who makes a living giving speeches about abstinence. Obviously abstinence only education didn't help her, either, even though her mother is one of the people who pushes it.

[RZM]

11. I don't know her mind, but you're probably right

I find it difficult to believe that she thinks abstinence-only works and you're right, she probably argued it to get in good with the base. That being said, I googled this issue and I couldn't find her arguing abstinence-only after her 2006 campaign for governor. Did she give it up after that? I don't know and I don't care enough to put more effort into looking again. Maybe somebody knows and could tell me ;)

I was in junior high during the 1992 election. Our health teacher was quite passionate about abstinence. It was obvious she really believed in it. She also made it clear she was all about George HW Bush for president (Perot won our school's mock election. H-Dub came in second and Clinton third). So at least back then, there were people who believed that shit. Maybe Palin really did believe it. I don't know.

[K8-EEE]

4. Oh for Christ's sake, get the smelling salts already

I can not, not, NOT stand Sarah but one of the things I don't give a flying f*ck about is who she had sex with before her marriage. Or after. Her and any kind of sex? DON'T CARE! It's the rest of her crap that makes me ill!

[rbixby]

5. Its the hypocrisy that matters, not the sex NT

[seabeyond]

6. it was the stupid, irresponsible, lying that mattered not the sexting.

thinking the hypocrisy shines

[Zywiec]

7. Yeah, like someone who smoked pot in high school

and then has the nerve to tell his kid not to. What a hypocrite!

[gratuitous]

10. I've heard that people in glass houses should be careful about throwing stones

But for some reason, this aphorism not only doesn't apply to our Republican friends, they will find ardent defenders even amongst folks who should know better. "I don't care if she throws stones! Leave her little glass castle alone!"