Opinions: Were Palin’s children ridiculed?
July 9th, 2009When Gov. Sarah Palin announced her intention to resign, among the reasons she cited was her family’s concern that her 14-month-old son Trig, who has Down Syndrome, had been “mocked and ridiculed by some pretty mean spirited adults.”
Was this an accurate account of what took place? Commentators offer their opinions.
NO: Sally Quinn in the Washington Post/Newsweek On Faith blog
I’d like to know the names of those mean-spirited adults who mocked and ridiculed her special needs child. I don’t believe it for a second. I think what she is talking about is that she was criticized for the way she dealt with her pregnancy with Trig and her caregiving of him after his birth.
UPDATE: Washington Post’s Sally Quinn Defends Scathing Palin Column—FOX News
YES. John Fund in the Wall Street Journal
Everyone in the family was weary of endless personal attacks, including mean-spirited suggestions on liberal blogs that all of her children should have been aborted and that she would run on a presidential platform promoting retardation.
YES. Heather Robinson in the Huffington Post
Personally, the whole matter has left me feeling a little like I did at the end of seventh grade, after a year spent passively watching bullies ostracize and pick on one of the only black girls in the school: sick, and embarrassed for all of us.
Whatever your passionate opinions, whatever your disagreements with her views, this woman and her family were savaged in a manner that went beyond any reasonable standard. She is a public figure, but her husband and children are not. That did not stop certain members of the media and blogosphere from ridiculing them in vicious fashion, even long after the election was decided.
YES, BUT: Katherine Mangu-Ward, Los Angeles Times
Palin’s right that her kids probably would have been better off never having heard, as she put it, “their baby brother Trig mocked by some pretty mean-spirited adults.” But her constant complaints about unfair attacks made her look, at best, like a whiny girl.
YES: Ben Voth in the American Thinker
The mocking of a disabled child, Trig Palin, must stand out as one of the most uniquely cruel and despicable contemporary trends of American politics.
YES: Jim Geraghty in the National Review’s Campaign Spot blog
There are terrible, cold-hearted people in this world, Ms. Quinn, and it’s hard not to empathize with Sarah Palin’s outrage, and perhaps the calculation that this treatment of her children was too high a price to pay to remain in the spotlight.
It’s easier to “not believe it for a second” when you also refuse to “look for it for a minute.”
Readers, what’s your opinion?
Related posts:
Huffpo writer says Palin running to get more ‘retarded people’
Writer: Palin reacting to ‘indecent’ treatment of Trig, Bristol
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July 10th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
I am severely physically disabled from birth defects and Sarah Palin has been a constant reminder to me that throughout my childhood my father would mention or push me ahead only when HE wanted something from somebody! I hated him for it! At 44 yrs. old it still hurts to think about how much he used me as a disabled person to get “special” treatment, favors and deals for himself! Sarah Palin is ignorant at best and very cruel at worst to single out and seperate Trig from any other child of hers! I hope Sarah Palin GROWS UP someday and quits trying to use any of her children to hide behind her fake and phony pretenses that she thinks she is gaining from it… because her children certainly won’t; nor have they!
July 10th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I have not watched or heard all the media broadcasts so I cannot say that it has not happened; but, I have not heard the “mean-spirited adults” that Palin mentions. Of course, she is the center of the attention so its possible she’s heard things that the media isn’t broadcasting.
But, if the comments are being made, at best it is poor taste and ignorance. #1) How can any adult with any heart speak mean things about a person with a disability; but, even more basic #2) How can anyone speak anything mean about a child?
July 10th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
If the standard by which we slam the Palin kids is the fact that they were “paraded” around at the convention. then why not go after Obama’s girls, they were at the democratic convention. How about Biden’s kids and grandkids, the whole Biden clan fromm mama Biden to baby Biden were paraded around. palin taking her daughter to a baseball game is parading her around. How about them shots of the Obama kids and the first dog? it is okay to not like the Palins but enough is enough.what are we like five years old. their are much more important things at stake that Sarah Palin’s idioms and turn of phrases. it is time to address more pressing issues like unemployment, world hunger, North Korea and a miriad of other life changing events.
July 10th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Any child of the president or a national politician is subject to intense and unfair scrutiny. Every politician knows this and surely Palin must have been aware her son Trig would be subjected to more intense and unfair scrutiny. Frankly, I question the judgment of any parent who becomes a national politician and has a child under 18 years of age. I for one could never subject my child to the media exposure that comes with such status. Palin’s complaints may be accurate but ring false in my estimation.
July 9th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
The media coverage on Palin resigning, and her reasons has been absolutely relentless. I have read Sally Quinn’s column multiple times and can not believe the level of disdain that is evident in her writing. “This is a woman who…” three different times to open up a disagreement with her political views and how she conducted herself. Were her children, especially Trig ridiculed? I have no idea, but if she says her family DID experience it, why would anyone doubt her? Whatever happened to giving people the benefit of the doubt? Ms. Quinn would like to see the names of specific people that mocked her and her family, that seems over the top to me. A pretty good example of a journalist that is letting her political ideology get the best of her judgment.
As a parent of a child with Down Syndrome, I felt nothing but optimism last summer when her candidacy was announced in terms of the overwhelmingly positive awareness this would shed on the special needs community. Unfortunately, that optimism turned out to be naive….the human aspect of what I thought would emerge turned out to be wishful thinking.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Sally Quinn didn’t try very hard. All she had to do was google Trig’s name to find some very disgusting blog posts and photoshopped images not to mention the comments from the readers on these sites. Plenty of mean-spirited adults for the picking. The more interesting challenge for her would be to find one negative thing said about Obama’s children. Google their names and there’s nothing but cuteness and love shown. They are clearly off-limits from personal attacks and rightly so. Trig deserves the same respect.
July 9th, 2009 at 9:52 am
I think she’s using Trig as a scapegoat. I also think we haven’t seen the last of her in politics. She knows she’ll be back. Maybe if she were smarter she wouldn’t get picked on so much. I’m a Dem but I see the appeal on why people like her. She definitely needs some more depth to her though.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:44 am
I am not privy to all of the comments Sarah Palin has heard about her child or children. I can say that as the parent of a child with Down syndrome, people’s comments, even those that are not mean-spirited, sometimes strike the hearts of parents as an attack on our children. I guess until you walk in someone else’s shoes — it is just hard to know, empathize or understand.