As a matter of policy the press does not reveal the identities of minors who are involved in criminal activity. Children cannot enter into contracts because they do not have the legal capacity to consent. Medical treatment is confidential and requires parental consent.
But incredibly, today the mainstream media has prominently displayed the full name, photograph and medical condition (pregnancy) of a 17-year-old minor, and some have even tried to score cheap political points — simply because she is the daughter of a candidate for vice president.
Why? Because it was necessary to respond to completely false and scurrilous accusations that her mother, Gov. Sarah Palin, faked her own pregnancy.
The story should be about phony, scurrilous accusations fueled by Obama supporters. Instead the media is trying to make some point about hypocrisy and abstinence education.
William Bennett on CNN got a little heated in questioning CNN’s coverage of this issue, and he was right. And Bill Kristol on Fox News almost throttled Morton Kondracke for suggesting that Palin’s daughter’s situation demonstrates the failure of abstinence education.
I’ve experienced this type of coverage — when I ran for Governor, supporters of one of my opponents committed a felony by illegally paying for a “push poll” to falsely claim I had an illegitimate child. The media made no effort to figure out who committed a crime in the midst of a political campaign. Instead they played up the two-decade old story of an engaged couple in their mid-20s, both college graduates, conceiving a child a month before their wedding – and partly because of that experience, being committed to the pro-life cause and to abstinence education.
Gov. Sarah Palin is not a hypocrite for supporting abstinence education, which is the right policy for the health of children who risk disease and profound emotional distress through underage sex, whether or not a child is conceived.
In the same way, Barack Obama is not a hypocrite for supporting anti-drug efforts even though he used cocaine as a young adult. And if, God forbid, one of his precious children were to experiment with drugs, he would still be right to speak out against drug use and the media would be wrong to focus on the child’s indiscretion. The hypocrisy argument is bogus.
Morton Kondracke and Obama supporters should be ashamed of themselves for trying to make an anti-Republican political point at the expense of a child.
To his credit, Barack Obama declared the subject off-limits and promised to fire any member of his campaign who made an issue of it.
But here is a question for the “objective” media — why are they so much more interested in the private problems of the Republican vice presidential nominee’s 17-year-old child than the very public and relevant activities of the Democratic vice presidential nominee’s fully grown, 38-year-old son, a Washington lobbyist who successfully gained millions of dollars of “earmarks” for his clients — with the help of the supposed “change” candidate, Sen. Obama?