An unwed mom at 25, Bristol Palin graduated from a mere hypocrite to a bad example…
Folks say that she's a hypocrite for being paid to push abstinence only to teens.
But, hey, she's not a teen anymore, not to mention she's found a nice niche, by grifting a corporation into hiring her and paying her almost a million dollars to work as an advocate against behavior that she, herself, has engaged in at least twice. Grift is a Palin family trait. I'm sure that she was taught well. http://www.inquisitr.com/2203203/bristol-palin-made-close-to-1-million-pushing-abstinence-only-policies-now-is-pregnant-with-child-no-2/ So, to me, we can point fingers at this new mommy and label her a hypocrite, but I'm not completely comfortable with placing all the responsibility on her plate.
Right off the bat, I can see at least three reasons why.
Clearly, she was the worst choice to be a spokesperson that was put in front of countless impressionable teens. If anything, those kids have been let down the most. First, by being taught discredited information by adults who should know better and second by default, being exposed to people who didn't have their best interests in mind. It was pure ideological indoctrination, in the form of abstinence only programming, and not creditable and useful information instead, which they really needed. Of course, those teens weren't told that at the time, when they were (most likely) obligated to attend Palin's seminars. So, they primary blame here goes to the people who sought out and hired Palin to give seminars to teens that they were responsible for… Whomever that was, church groups, education administrators, counselors and the like, they fucked up big time here.
These are people who should know better, but clearly did not care. They had an agenda, and the truth was simply too inconvenient for them. Otherwise, they would have hired, you know, Planned Parenthood folks to teach their kids a thing or two. Of course, that brings us to the second set of people to blame for this situation where Palin was chosen, and that's the Anti-Abortion movement.
The Anti-Abortion movement lies. They lie about everything and they can get away with lying about everything because their propaganda is designed to keep people ignorant about basic human reproduction and reproductive rights. Here's a great article from Cosmo Magazine, which explains how these people operate, through the use of so-called crisis pregnancy centers: http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a38642/heartbeat-international-conference-crisis-pregnancy-centers-abortion/
One thing the article notes is that legislators and politicians are mandating the setting up of these bogus organizations within their jurisdictions, but most of all, they're using OUR tax dollars to fund them. Yep, this makes the third condition by which someone like Palin could be hired to lie to teens. Local politics counts and bad politicians always render bad policies. You can add the corporate arm to this factor, which definitely draws a profit in their business model to indoctrinate impressionable teens.
But all-in-all, we shouldn't be naive about how these things have happened. After all, America was built on grade primo bullshit since day one and has continued to thrive on it to this very day. We have corporations and politicians working hand-in-hand to further the cause of bullshit. Bullshit is simply the American way. Bullshit is a constitutional right. At any given time, the majority of people in this country will volunteer to be willing consumers of any outrageous bullshit that anyone is offering, just as long as it's pretty and shiny enough and absolves the entirety of American society any collective responsibility at all.
And this is why I can't completely blame Bristol Palin for her own circumstance. I blame the conditions of the world that she was born in, a world that was willing to recruit her as a pawn when, as existing in a sexist and paternalistic society, she found that being exploited by the powers that be was her best option. She clearly could have declined such a role… But hell, they waved close to a million dollars in front of her face and she opted for human nature. Again, another demonstration of her inability to be a good example.
The one thing that all of this highlights is the paucity of effort that's put into instilling critical thinking skills into our young people. It's not happening and an emphasis has been placed on ideological indoctrination has been furthered instead. For good reason, obviously: There's profit in propaganda, in creating group think and in discrediting critical thinking, not to mention real, undeniable facts about the world in which we live. We live in a world where some can become insanely rich, influence the systems that facilitates an upward transfer of wealth and convinces the majority of people who are victimized by those systems to support those systems. I can't blame the victim here and to me, pointing fingers at Palin is just another way to blame the victim, even if some victims are better served than others.
So, unless all of us choose to do otherwise, the fault will be with ourselves as a whole. Especially, when we're operating in such a way to work against each other, solely for our own benefit and instead of all of our collective best interests.
Between you and me, I never expect the people in this country to get things right the first time… There's always too much time and effort put into getting it wrong, while not being collectively self-aware to realize it. Face facts… We're really fucked up in this country.
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