Oh no not another post on Sarah Palin's daughter

I’d thought that, whilst I was away, the relentless furore surrounding Sarah Palin’s daughter might have abated. It hasn’t. Both Bristol’s pregnancy and her supposedly impending wedding to her boyfriend Levi Johnson are still being exploited to make every conceivable (no pun intended) political, social and religious point about sex education, abstinence-based or otherwise, about teenage pregnancy, about shotgun marriage, about working mothers, about everything conceivably (oops) related to the Family Values agenda. What seems to be missing are the questions of context, of what it means to be 17, unmarried and pregnant as the daughter of the governor of a cold, distant, right-wing US state. What it means, as the daughter of an Alaskan governor, to be 17 and unmarried or 17 and pregnant or unmarried and pregnant is question enough. I can only speak from British experience in observing that, in many educated, middle-class areas, the whole thing would be totally inconceivable, in some minority communities most girls are married the minute they turn 16 anyway and in many marginalised inner-city communities, the idea of marriage is entirely beyond conception at age 27 or 37 let alone 17. So whatever one believes Uncle Sam or indeed God himself to believe, context is everything.

Essentially, though, there are really only two people who know the circumstances of the conception of Junior Johnson-Palin. There are therefore only two can speak honestly about the extent to which the baby and the marriage were planned or wanted (though Levi’s MySpace ‘I don’t want kids’ assertion is a bit of a giveaway) and only two families who know how the Palins and the Johnsons responded to the news.

And aside from questions of context and the relevance of it all to any form of political or moral campaign... I mean, please, Bristol’s 17. 17. Think back to when you and/or your sister or daughter was 17. Would you and/or she have been able to handle the world’s media in your/her face? Could the world’s media therefore please leave Bristol Palin alone?