Johnston comes full circle

Here’s the latest twist in the sad soap opera that was initiated by Sarah Palin when, by irresponsibly accepting John McCain’s irresponsible choice of her as his vice presidential candidate, she propelled her daughter Bristol and her daughter’s out of wedlock pregnancy into the national spotlight. Having accepted the prominent position of vice presidential nominee, she was compelled to force her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend Levi Johnston into a commitment to marry which neither of them was ready for. This led to the phony engagement (which I looked at askance [“Therefore the announced wedding is a fiction, and my previous skeptical characterization of the wedding as the ‘supposed’ wedding was correct. Levi and Bristol do not want and do not plan to marry,” VFR, September 5, 2008], while all the mainstream conservatives were cooing over it), and all the pressures surrounding the teenaged couple, which led to the breakdown of their relationship and the termination of their engagement soon after the November election. Which in turn led Levi Johnston, as the now famous former fiancé and father of the child of the daughter of a former vice presidential candidate, into his strange and pathetic career of celebrity (a celebrity which would not have existed absent Palin’s acceptance of the vice presidential nomination), including his nude photo spread in Playgirl, his disgusting smears of Palin, and his complete alienation from Bristol and her family. Which, after a year or so, was ultimately followed by a reconciliation between Levi and Bristol, their announcement of their renewed engagement, and Levi’s apology (inadequate though it was) for his smears of Palin. Which was followed, in two weeks (as a result of the revelation that Levi had fathered another child with another young woman), by the breakdown of Bristol and Levi’s reconciliation and the termination of their renewed engagement. Which in turn led to the latest twist:

Levi Johnston takes back his apology to Palin

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)—Levi Johnston, the father of Sarah Palin’s grandson, says he wishes he hadn’t apologized for telling lies about the former Alaska governor because he’s “never lied about anything.”

Johnston said in an interview on CBS’ “The Early Show” to air Friday that he wishes that he hadn’t issued the apology to Palin.

“I don’t really regret anything,” Johnston said, who has appeared nude on the cover of Playgirl. “But the only thing I wish I wouldn’t have done is put out that apology ‘cause it kind of makes me sound like a liar. And I’ve never lied about anything. So that’s probably the only thing. The rest of the stuff I can live with.”

CBS said the interview was taped Thursday in Los Angeles.

Johnston is the two-time fiance of Palin’s eldest daughter, Bristol, and the father of Bristol’s son Tripp. Bristol Palin’s teen pregnancy thrusted the couple into the national spotlight during Sarah Palin’s run as the GOP’s vice presidential candidate in 2008.

Johnston has expressed an interest in politics, filing papers last week to run for office in his hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, next year.

While he has not officially declared which political office he aspires to, his manager, Tank Jones, has said Johnston is interested in a run for mayor or city council. Earlier this month, Jones confirmed the 20-year-old Johnston planned to run for office as part of a reality TV show.

Wasilla is where Palin got her political start, first as a council member and then as mayor.

Johnston said he hopes he could be a better mayor of Wasilla than Palin. “I can’t guarantee or promise you anything but I’m gonna try … That’s the goal,” he said.

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Paul T. writes:

Mayor of Wasilla? At the rate he’s going, “Father of His Country” is more apt. Or “Baby Daddy of His Country,” anyway.

LA writes:

Now what would have happened with Levi and Bristol if McCain-Palin had won the election? Two possibilities: One, they would have married—because they simply had to marry, and they somehow would have stayed married for the same reason. The pressure of their outward situation would have forced them to maintain a facade of normality, as unhappy as they might have been, and as many problems as were boiling within. Or, Two, they would have married, but the marriage, notwithstanding all the outward pressures to the contrary, would have broken up, and Levi, the Vice President’s son-in-law, separated or divorced from the Vice President’s daughter and famous and at loose ends, would have pursued a course of pathetic celebrity very like the course he’s actually pursued, with the nude Playgirl photos, the smears of Vice President Palin, the complete alienation between him and the Palins and so on. It would have been an ongoing national embarrassment. We were spared this, because the Republicans and conservatives didn’t have their way, and McCain-Palin lost the election.

And there’s a third possibility, that they would not have married, but would have broken their engagement (just as happened in actuality), and the country would have had the spectacle of the Vice President-elect’s daughter giving birth to an out-of-wedlock child, with, of course, all the conservatives saying what a wonderful thing this was, because, after all, Bristol hadn’t had an abortion, and that’s all that matters, marriage doesn’t matter, only the avoidance of abortion matters—that’s all that remains of “traditional family values.” The fact of the Vice President’s daughter having an illegitimate child would have pushed the country and especially conservatives to legitimize and normalize out of wedlock birth far more than they have actually done. Meanwhile Levi in this third scenario would have again pursued his career of tawdry celebrity and smears of Vice President Palin, just as in the second scenario. If the Republicans and conservatives had had their way and McCain had won, the country would have had this unbelievable family mess, this reality TV melodrama, on its hands for four years at the highest level of our national life. That’s what the Republicans would have brought us, if they had won. We were spared it, because they lost.

LA continues:

And the thought process I’ve gone through in this entry is inconceivable to the conservatives, because it is based on the premise that Palin should not have accepted the offer to be the vice presidential nominee. The conservatives cannot even imagine such a scenario, because it would mean that we should not have had Sarah Palin as a national figure. In effect they’ve sold out their former belief in traditional family values, in order to have Sarah Palin.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 27, 2010 01:55 AM | Send