Does anybody still remember what consumed the whole country 48 hours ago?
It was Sarah Palin’s impending grandmotherhood.
It was her 17-year-old daughter Bristol’s unwed pregnancy.
Does anyone, outside the Palin family, still care?
Not after that speech Palin delivered Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention.
Nor should we.
The speech was a wake-up call to Maryland Democrats mistakenly basking in the afterglow of Denver. (Somewhere former Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s last running mate, Kristen Cox, must be thinking, “That could have been me.”)
Nobody knows yet how Palin will stand up to questioning, and debate, and further examination of her political history.
But somebody wrote a combative speech for her this week, and she caught its rhythms, and its spirit, and delivered it with a moxie somewhere between Sally Field’s Norma Rae and Dustin Hoffman’s Tootsie.
The closest she came to the pregnancy “crisis” was a quick line — “Our family has the same ups and downs as any family …” — and then she flitted away. As she should have, and farewell to her family’s private business.
Except, it won’t be farewell — because we live in such a bitter political culture now that invasion of privacy is routine at every level, whether it’s Democrats spreading dirt on Palin in Minnesota or Republicans spreading dirt on Gov. Martin O’Malley in Maryland — or, for that matter, the smarmy sexual whispers that used to be spread about some Maryland congressional people of both parties. It reeks, no matter who does it.
But we should care a lot about such a political culture, which sent squadrons of reporters looking into the shadowy corners of the Palins’ private lives and then dressed it up to make it look important with — let’s see: how about the latest government figures on teen pregnancies?
For the record: In Maryland, it’s 91 out of every thousand teenage girls, and in Baltimore it’s been about as high as anywhere in the whole country.
So much for the thin layer of social significance.
Palin mentioned none of the pregnancy business in her speech, nor did she have to.
The air had turned numb from so much talk about it.
A teenage couple pays the price for intimacy, and then has to stand exposed in front of the whole leering country.
We should pick on somebody our own size.
But we should also understand that the politicians set up this system, and then hypocritically decry it when it backfires on them.
They want it both ways.
They want publicity, until it becomes publicity they don’t like, at which point they want everyone to turn away.
From his campaign trail, Barack Obama sent out stern words: No one from his camp would attempt to exploit the Palin pregnancy.
This was noble and transparently meaningless.
There’s nothing left for the Democrats to say that hasn’t circled the globe several times over.
Obama declares that the exploitation of families has no place in politics.
McCain agrees.
They both sound high-minded but willfully naïve.
The politicians want their families exploited, all right, but only in politically acceptable ways, in which they control the choreography.
Obama trots out Michelle for a prime-time speech.
Then come the little girls, who call out, “I love you, daddy.”
Joe Biden lets us know his son’s heading for Iraq, so we’re assured McCain’s boy isn’t the only son serving his country.
Cindy McCain ostentatiously sits next to Bristol Palin and cradles Sara’s 5-month-old special-needs son in her lap for the cameras.
Welcome to prime time.
Isn’t this child up a little late?
Then we have Palin’s acceptance speech, in which she mentions her son’s headed off to Iraq and “my sister and her husband just built a service station.”
They’re just folks, folks.
Everywhere she goes, she has her whole beaming family bundled about her.
They all do it, Democrats and Republicans.
They trot out their families to assure everybody they’re just like us, hoping to wring a few votes out of their normalcy.
But, having opened the door into their lives, they decry all coverage as prying and unseemly when reporters look too closely.
Now it’s the Republicans complaining about invasion of privacy.
Of course, they’re the same folks who thought it was fine to undress the Clintons in every conceivable way.
Soon it’ll be the Obamas complaining again.
It’s inevitable.
