Back when Palinpalooza began, and the progosphere was going nuts over rumors about Sarah Palin and the maternity of one of her children, I said this:

I’ve been following the question of the maternity of Palin’s youngest child, and find the response by both sides largely unseemly. . . . The glee with which the progosphere has leaped on this story is also pretty distressing.  Folks aren’t merely reporting it, they’re celebrating it.  And they’re calling it “babygate.”  That’s not just inappropriate, it’s downright tasteless. . . .

And somewhere in the middle of all this is a little boy with Down syndrome.

As we all know well, a backlash did occur, in part because the blogosphere got the maternity issue wrong. The McCain campaign was able to manage the announcement of Bristol’s pregnancy in a way that rightly or wrongly, made bloggers look even more churlish.  But they did so cynically — as I noted here:

What I find odd and a bit distressing about this is that this was issued not by the Palin family but by the McCain campaign — from Arlington, not Anchorage (or Juneau or Wasilla or wherever the Palin family spends its time).  Shouldn’t something like this have come from the Governor’s office?

I say that not to doubt the veracity of the Palins’ statement, but to note that McCain operatives, not the Palin family, are managing this story.  I find that deeply problematic — because for all the campaign’s talk about the progosphere inappropriately politicizing this story, the reality is that they’ve now made it utterly political.  And that can’t be good for the Palins, their kids, or the process.

Last night, we saw just how cynical the McCain campaign could be.  The Palins’ youngest child, Trig — the one with Down Syndrome — became a prop, handed off from person to person in order to ensure that as many people as possible got to look good holding him.

Some excerpts from my live blogging of Giuliani and Palin’s speeches last night:

10:18  Shot of Cindy [McCain] holding Trig Palin [during Giuliani's speech].

10:26  Another shot of Cindy with Trig.  What in the world is that baby doing in that noisy hall at this time at night??

10:30  Todd now holding Trig.  Still have to ask what Trig is doing in that hall at this time of night.  Bad reflection on both parents, not just Sarah. . . .

10:37  Introduces family.  Todd Palin raises Trig’s hand and waves it.  “Children with special needs inspire a very very special love.”  Honest to Buddha, I wish to hell I didn’t feel that her appeal to families with special needs wasn’t completely cynical.

10:39  How scripted is this?  Todd wasn’t holding Trig when Sarah gave him a shout out and he stood and waved.

[11:15] I’m still deeply disturbed that they’ve got Trig up on stage.  It’s after 10:00 in [St. Paul] and he’s four months old.  I’m sorry, but that is bad parenting.  By both parents.

Think about the decibel level in the room last night.  Would you take your 4 month-old to a Motorhead concert?  Or even a Celine Dion concert?  Would you take him or her to The Dark Knight or any other loud and violent movie?  Of course not.  As parents, you know that doing so would leave your child overstimulated.

I remember once when Molly and I were driving to Michigan to introduce our two-month old daughter to her grandmother and great-grandmother.  Halfway through the trip, we had dinner at a restaurant that had become a favorite stop of ours.  We were new parents and didn’t realize just how noisy it was.  But we went ahead and ate there.  That night, our daughter was up most of the night crying.  She had gotten overstimulated by all the noise and didn’t settle down until nearly 4 am.  To this day, it was one of the longest and most difficult nights we have ever had with her.

That was a restaurant, whose decibel level had to be one-tenth of the convention last night.

What I didn’t mention during my live blogging is that when Todd got his moment in the sun (Sarah:  “he’s still my guy”), he stood up and waved to the crowd.  Before he did so, he handed Trig off — not to one of his three teenagers but to Piper, his six-year-old daughter.  And while the rest of the audience was riveted by Sarah’s speech, Piper sat there, stroking her little brother’s hair while the cameras periodically cut away from Sarah to show her and Trig.

Would you let your 6-year-old daughter care for your 4-month-old without keeping an eye on her every single second she was holding him?  That’s what the Palins did last night.  The few shots of the whole family clearly showed them distracted by Sarah’s speech and not paying much attention to Piper and Trig.

Of course, when it came time for the family to go on stage, Todd took Trig back, once again looking like a loving and attentive father.

All of this is just appalling.  This isn’t parenting, it’s neglect.  And it certainly doesn’t reflect family values.

By focusing on Trig, I don’t want to suggest that the treatment of the rest of the family was somehow okay.  Piper also shouldn’t have been anywhere near that arena. Willow looked like a deer in the headlights.  Having Track present when he’s deploying in a week was deeply cynical.  Where will his parents be during the last week before he deploys?  The McCain campaign already has announced a heavy travel schedule for Sarah.  Will she take time to say goodbye to the son she so readily uses as a prop in her speeches?

The exploitation of Bristol Palin (and her new fiancee, Levi Johnston) at both the airport and in the arena was particularly selfish and brutish. On the tarmac, McCain spent more time hugging Bristol than he did his entire family.  And if he had shaken Levi’s hand one more time, it might have fallen off.

But that was just the latest episode of these poor kids’ saga.  It was the McCain campaign, not the Palin family, that announced Bristol’s pregnancy and engagement.  It made me wonder:  when Sarah and Todd Palin decided that she should accept McCain’s offer, did they talk to Bristol about how this was going to change her life?

Apparently not:

[The Palin family went to] the Manchester Inn and Conference Center in Middleton, Ohio. They were checked into the hotel as the Upton Family.While there, Governor Palin’s children, who had been told they were going to Ohio to celebrate their parents’ wedding anniversary, were told for the first time that their mother would be a nominee for Vice President of the United States of America.”

Keep in mind that this report predates the announcement of Bristol’s pregnancy.  It was not intended as some sort of snarky commentary on the family but rater a tick-tock of what happened in the hours leading up to McCain’s announcement of Sarah Palin as his VP candidate.

Keeping that in mind, take a look at that timeline again.  If it’s accurate — and if it’s true that Sarah told McCain about Bristol before he chose her as his running mate — it means that Sarah Palin told John McCain about Bristol’s pregnancy before she told Bristol (and her other kids) about her decision to run for Vice President.

So much for putting family first.  In fact, it puts a whole new spin on putting country first, doesn’t it?

The Republicans like to say that they are the party of family values.  But last night, in permitting a tiny little boy to be exploited so ruthlessly, they demonstrated that two of those values are cynicism and cruelty.  They — John McCain, Sarah Palin and Todd Palin in particular — should be ashamed of themselves.

Photo:  dane bryan on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

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