Smear

The presidential campaign has taken an ugly turn. I don’t ordinarily write on the campaign, but these are not ordinary circumstances.

The rumors about Palin have been launched and circulated without the slightest regard for truth or propriety. First Daily Kos promoted the idea that Palin’s youngest child was, in fact, her grandson. As usual, Kos has erased these posts, now that they are “inoperable,” but Little Green Footballs has the history of how Kos promoted the lie. Kos may have a greater need these days for deleters than writers. Then the media jumped on the notion that the daughter’s pregnancy proves that abstinence-only sex education is a failure even though they have no idea what sex education the daughter received or what precautions, if any, she took. Mona Charen has a terse rebuttal:

The notion that we can draw any large conclusions about public policy from a single instance is just too absurd to credit. Suppose it turns out (and God willing these details will never be sought or publicized) that Bristol and Levi used a condom and it failed? Where does that leave the liberal argument? Or suppose they were taught very thoroughly (as may be the case in the Alaska schools) about how to use birth control and simply disregarded all that teaching? Does that prove anything about public policy?

And there’s probably more to come. Not satisfied with their romp through the gutter to date, some on the left are eagerly promoting worse rumors (and I decline to repeat them here).

There are many good responses to all of this. Just to name a few:

Jay Nordlinger “Morning Hilarity, Part II”

Confederate Yankee “What Day Will Barack Obama Drop Out”

Beldar “A Timely Palin Family History”

There is also the Sarah Palin Sexism Watch.