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A post from DoubleX blogger Lauren Bans:
It’s official. Levi Johnston is posing for Playgirl next month.
Though whether he’s showing his johnston or not is still to be
revealed. What is clear is that Levi, in his attempts to milk his
sudden fame for all it’s worth, has fashioned himself into some kind of
ironic representative of failed conservative ideals. (His ad for pistachios riffs about “using protection.”) The only thing is the joke’s not so funny ... (Read more in DoubleX.)
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The juicy bits from Levi Johnston's article in Vanity Fair are now online. The most talked-about excerpt is sure to be that Sarah Palin wanted to keep Bristol's pregnancy a secret ... (Read more in DoubleX)
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A post from guest blogger Lauren Bans:
The media, it’s not doing so well. Maybe you’ve heard? Judging from the number of B-list celebs who snagged highly sought-after media jobs this week, it seems like the favored editorial solution to such trying times may be: Don’t merely write about undeserving famous people, hire them to work for you ... (Read more in DoubleX.)
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So Blagojevich and Fabio walk into a karaoke bar. No, really. Video,
and another favorite butt of the joke, Levi Johnston, enjoying his
position as such, after the jump ... (Read more in Double X.)
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Like Jessica, I devoured Todd Purdum's blistering report in the current issue of Vanity Fair
about Sarah Palin that draws on sniping from former John McCain aides,
shrugging statements of disownment from acquaintances in Wasilla, and
sorrowful head-shaking from the Republican intelligentsia. The
wide-ranging “profile” of the woman who almost stood second in line to
the presidency pre-empts the forthcoming book that netted the Alaskan
governor seven figures. And, having undergone the saga of the 2008
presidential campaign—particularly the post-Labor Day sprint that made
up Palin’s first months in the public spotlight—it’s astonishing to
think that there could POSSIBLY be more to the story.
And yet, writes Purdum ... (Read more at DoubleX.com.)
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Alaska's most famous heartthrob was down in the lower 48 last night, talking to Larry King about his association with the Palin family. Even though Sarah Palin, through her press agents, has repeatedly denounced Levi and his family's fame-whoring ways, she should actually be thanking him, and here's why.
First of all, he's keeping her name in the press, and not in an entirely negative way. On Larry King, Levi said, "[The Palins] always treated me like a son. They were real nice to me. And I thought of her [Sarah Palin] as like my second mother. You know, Todd was always a great guy and helped me out with a lot of things." Though Levi says that he is not allowed to see his son, Tripp, from his family's appearance on the Tyra Banks Show, it is clear that the problem is with Levi's bratty sister and not necessarily with Bristol, Sarah, or anyone else in the Palin camp.
Secondly, the self-proclaimed red neck and his publicly embarrassing mishaps help place Sarah Palin firmly in the pantheon of American politics. Let me explain: There is a long and storied history of political figures with completely humiliating, ne'er-do-well relatives. From Roger Clinton, Bill's hapless half-brother, to Billy Carter, who bragged about smoking pot at the White House, our century's political lights have almost always come with baggage. My favorite tale of political-relative embarrassment was told by Miami Herald reporter Edna Buchanan in her excellent memoir, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face. Buchanan happened upon Sam Johnson, LBJ's "problem drinker" brother, while he was holed up in a Miami hotel with a platinum blond.
He and the blonde were delighted to have photos taken. Then he insisted that I pose with him. She helped him to a bedside chair and took my camera. I sat beside him. She found us in the lens. I said, "cheese." He lunged, grabbed me around the neck, and planted a big mushy kiss on my cheek. Then he tumbled back onto the bed, rolled over, and went to sleep in one violent motion.
When the story ran, it did not include any of these hilarious details—Buchanan said her editors decided to run it as a "perfectly straight interview with the president's brother." And that's the big difference between Levi's public speaking tour and the hijinks of previous political relatives: If that happened today, TMZ would have plastered photos of drunken Levi with a blonde as soon as they had been taken. In our current media environment, Levi has the power to take control of his own story, but even this "redneck" is smart enough to know he shouldn't be spotted out doing anything even remotely licentious. And that's the third reason Sarah Palin should be grateful for Levi: She could have it so much worse.
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As we try to craft the Platonic ideal of the teen sex talk, I have a few thoughts. Like Hanna, I’m all for mixed (or, to be more precise, layered) messages. I don’t think there’s anything hypocritical or unloving about delivering up a combo platter of threats and promises: Having sex in high school is a lousy idea (but if you’re really going to do it, make sure you use protection.) If you get pregnant in high school, your future is screwed six ways from Sunday (but if it happens anyway, I’ll stick by you whatever you choose to do.) After all, much of adult life functions on this kind of more-than-binary logic: For example, most marriages operate on the assumption that cheating is intolerable, but when infidelity does happen, it’s often worth working through the problem and staying together.
God knows Levi and Bristol could have used a bit more negative capability (the capacity to hold two contradictory thoughts at the same time) as they embarked on their ill-considered journey toward parenthood. What’s most maddening in their press appearances is the way that, enabled by fatuous interviewers, they blur together their crappy decision-making with its, in some sense, happy outcome (a baby, even an unplanned one, is bound to be a source of joy.) I could have throttled Tyra Banks when she said to Levi, “If [Bristol] could wave a magic wand, she’d have preferred to wait ten years.” Magic wands are notoriously ineffective as a means of birth control. Like Jessica's mom, I’d rather arm my daughter with a stern warning, an implied promise, and a five-dollar box of condoms.
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Emily, Levi's interview with Tyra Banks yesterday may have been catnip for haters, but it was mostly just a sad, sordid business. In the clip below (via HuffPo), Levi is just a moose caught in headlights. His affect is a combination of uncomfortable and dim, and it seems like his sister Mercede is running the show (which may explain the choice of interviewers). When asked why he no longer sees Tripp as much as he wants to, Levi told Tyra, "I think [Bristol] and my sister have got in some fights, and I don't think she trusts my sister." While he remained mum for the second part of the show, Levi did say that he and Bristol didn't always use condoms and that Sarah Palin did not force him to propose—nor did she force him to get "Bristol" tattooed on his ring finger. If Levi's learned anything from this experience, it's not to get someone's name etched on himself. "I wouldn't recommend it," he said. Check out Levi and his family below, and pray that Levi chooses to pull back from the press (and chooses to use condoms consistently). He would benefit from an injection of normalcy in his life, even if Sarah Palin continues to be in the public eye.
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Could it really be that the Sarah Palin haters are getting exactly what they predicted in the aftermath of Bristol Palin's teenage pregnancy? First Bristol and Levi Johnston called off the wedding. Now they are using the knives of his Tyra Banks appearance and her press release to slash each other. It's like I-told-you-so catnip. When Bristol did her interview with Greta after the baby's birth, I was on the side of seeing something real there. But this latest round is all tabloid parody, down to the high-road claim that Bristol is busy "advocating abstinence." Actually her crackup with Levi is a public service announcement about teen pregnancy.
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Hanna, I feel pretty much the same about Bristol Palin’s predicament as I felt about the Crihanna debacle. The baby beaus weren’t going to stay together anyway, so why stay together in the midst of such drama? At these young ages, there are no guarantees—and actuarial tables, if not common sense, would counsel against making puppy love permanent. Sure, Rihanna and Brown became the breadwinners for their older family members at 21 and 19, respectively (a whole different story), and the 18-year-old Palin became a “role model” before even leaving the province of underaged handle-chugging, but someone (um, you know, parents) should have reminded them: You are not adults.
So of course Levi isn't "hands on." We should applaud Palin—however belatedly, she came to the right decision. But why don’t we teach kids that it’s OK to break up? Give it two years, max—and if by then you’re over 25, split or get married. Seems clinical, but is it any worse than this surreal mythology of true romance that allows teens to tear at each others’ emotions until, one day, there are bruises—or a baby on board?
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Linda's piece on Slate yesterday notes that the statistics on teen pregnancy show a grim reality for girls in Bristol Palin's situation. The numbers on teen marriage don't look much better. A 2001 study found:
If the wife was a teenager at first marriage, the marriage is much more likely to dissolve than if the wife was at least 20 years of age at marriage. ... After 10 years of marriage, 48 percent of marriages of women under age 18 years at marriage have disrupted compared with 40 percent of marriages of women who were 18-19 years of age at marriage, 29 percent of marriages of women who were 20-24 years of age at marriage, and 24 percent of marriages of women at least 25 years of age at marriage.
So will those wedding bells ring when Bristol's 17 or 18? It might make a difference. Of course, quickie marriages can work—see Rachael's parents' story below.
But how's this for unfair? We're discussing the odds that someone in Bristol's circumstances will end up broke, uneducated, and divorced, while everyone's drooling over her boyfriend. A New York blogger calls him "sex on skates." The New York Daily News rhapsodizes about "the handsome teen with a light dusting of whiskers on his chin—his dark brown hair curly and wet," calling him "ruggedly handsome" and "broad-chested." I guess I'm the only one who can't get past his almost-mullet.
Update: The almost-mullet is gone! The McCain-Palin campaign must have made Levi get a haircut before letting him on the plane to Minnesota.
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