Some things you might not know about Sarah Palin

For starters, the Republican VP candidate allegedly hid her daughter’s pregnancy and claimed the baby as her own. Also, she had only met McCain once prior to the nomination announcement (and the phone call between the two regarding the nomination was the only other point of direct contact).

She does not believe that humans are responsible for global warming, thinks creationism should be taught in schools and only has about 18 months of political office experience.

Sounds like it is going to be a fun election.

Daily Kos has a very detailed and somewhat horrific account of how Palin pretended her 16-year-old daughter’s baby was hers. The story only broke on Saturday and it is possible that it in itself is just a bunch of lies. However, quite tellingly, there is no response from Palin herself, not even to dispute some of the lesser charges (for example, even is she is the mother, she put her baby in grave danger while boarding an eight-hour flight while “in labour”). Also read the follow up.

The story has gathered fast momentum online. What will be interesting to observe is how the main media reacts. On the one hand, this could be quite a scandal and therefore a sure-seller. On the other, it could alienate a whole bunch of readers/viewers, especially if the story turns out to be false.

Of course, from the moment that the nomination was made public, Sarah Palin came under immense scrutiny. And remember: Google never forgets. Combine that with other sources of information on the web, a huge number of web-savvy researchers and bloggists, and you better hope you are as clean as you appear to be.

[Update: It has now been announced that the daughter is, in fact, pregnant as we speak. 5 months pregnant. Which would make it impossible that she is the mother of the 4 month old. However, in the interest of conspiracy theories, can we really be sure it is 5 months? Of, what fun can be had ….]

Unfortunately with Sarah Palin, who is already being painted by the Republican Party as a squeaky clean mother of five (better watch those numbers!), this will be a difficult reputation to live up to. Already she is being accused of “fixing” her own Wikipedia entry, a practice that is strongly frowned upon by the web community.

If you are at all interested in the US elections, or just take perverse pleasure in the idiocy of politicians / Republicans, I suggest you follow the links in this post to the full stories. If you want more information, here are 7 resources to learn more about Sarah Palin.

And as a last laugh, have a look at this very brief video which has Cindy McCain saying that Palin has foreign policy experience because “don’t forget, Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia”. You can’t make this stuff up.

It makes local politics look mild by comparison.