...Can you imagine all this stuff going on in the White House if McCain had won? It would be like having a Jerry Springer guest in DC....

Bristol, despite her mother's glorification of small-town life, will likely attend college, which would require her to move away, probably to a larger, more cosmopolitan community. Levi, by contrast, has no plans to leave Wasilla. As soon as he passes that "last test," his education is complete. Since they are no longer a couple, he would lose regular contact with his baby boy.

By going public with his plight, Levi hopes to make it about "father's rights." The Palins could counter that fatherhood is not only a right, but a responsibility. He has no job and therefore cannot demonstrate an ability to buy formula, diapers, etc., should he be awarded joint custody or visitation.

Yet making that legal argument risks casting the Palins in an unflattering light. They come across as people willing to use children as pawns. According to the family court judge which presided over her sister's divorce, the Governor's attempt to get her estranged brother-in-law fired from his state trooper job was aimed at cutting off his source of income to undercut his child custody bid. For all the talk of family values, they don't seem support of father's right or a child's right to be raised by both parents.

Nonetheless, I do understand the Palin's reluctance to allow Tripp to spend time in Levi's home which belongs to his mother. I would presume she got into drug dealng to pay for her own addiction to Oxycontin. Not the best person to be around an infant. But, for whatever reason, they can't publicly state that, perhaps because it would tarnish Sarah's image by bringing in class issues? She depicted herself as a victim of elitism, yet the Johnstons have accused her family of precisely the same in denying Levi unsupervised access to his son. "They think we're trailer-park trash" Mercede informed the tabloids.

I won't soon forget the shrill and angry rhetoric of those who attacked the "liberal pieties" of anyone who questioned the "they're getting married" and will live happily ever after post-convention narrative.

Why?

Whatever.

/rolls eyes in disbelief

A "fierce response" to the Tyra interview, eh? Nice work, Sarah.

It's as if the sperm donor truck crashed into a bus full of drunk cheerleaders.

and we have bigger fish to fry. why all this small-minded, small town interest in this matter?

Bossy, controlling, domineering (insisting that Levi stop talking with his sister???). The false sense of victimization, the overreaching (Levi being way too much of a stud for plainish looking and obviously insecure Palin), the vindictiveness and spite -- the hallmarks of a petty, Nixonianesque family character. It is not that Palin is trash, it is that she is narcisstic, self righteous, and full of shit that so irks. Where is her maganminity, where is her sense that you let your children figure out their relationship and serve as counselor rather than preacher. Instead it is a family of neurotic, self serving assholes who have just the amount of moxy and managerial ambition to trample over the likes of the Levi family.

I find that I cannot. What really stinks is grandparents using parents in a proxy war for custody. Does Bristol Palin have a job? When neither parent seems ready to parent, calling in the unfit grandparents is a particularly disheartening thing to see.

Sigh ... The sad truth is that, in many cases, no one is especially qualified to have custody. Don't the elder Palins have enough kids already? I wouldn't give Sarah Palin custody of a flea-ridden pound puppy.

"Hunting sheep?" Have they herds of wild sheep up there?

He is a good looking young fellow... and with this TV exposure a good speech writer, and a voice coach, he could be well set for a political career.

However it does disturb me a bit that he refers to his son Tripp as this baby. Has he forgotten the name?

Glad to hear he lost the ring when hunting. Beaver, most likely.

They are called big horn sheep, and they are the creatures your see butting heads in the Dodge Ram Commercials.

http://www.bighorninstitute.org/wildsheep.htm

I actually find the subject of sheep hunting more interesting than this custody battle. I hope to hear less of it.

I know I have been as bad as anyone about commenting on this tripe, but please, there must be something else out there to write about. I mean come on.

To all of the readers of this column who don't venture out of Manhattan, yes there are wild sheep throughout the western US. Todd was likely hunting a Dall's sheep indigenous to AK and Canada. Type "Dall's sheep" into Google for some nice pics.

Think curly horns jumping around mountain crags.

No, to the elitist east coast asshats, he was not shooting domestic animals in a pen. While I find the Palins dispicable on so many levels. I am truly taken aback by the classist (urbanist?) tone to so much of the comments thrown their way.

...for taking time out from their busy schedule of hunting, studying, court appearances and so on to travel all the way to Los Angeles to be interviewed by L. King. I fully understand their resentment at having their soiled undergarments washed in public and pray that, having now cleared the air with a tough cross examination by Larry King, they will now be able to hunt, study, and appear in court undisturbed.

But it sounds a little odd to me that the son of an unmarried couple would have his last name listed as the father's name on the birth certificate. Can anyone confirm if this is kosher in Alaska or other states? Even odder if the mother's family could then change the child's name without the consent of the father, though King seemed to think this is possible.

I feel sorry for Bristol and Levi. They're just kids who made a mistake, and I get the sense they were steamrolled into their decision to flaunt their relationship and their child for political purposes.

Got to admit though, I get this tingly sick feeling of schadenfreude whenever I see these stories about the Palin family. During the campaign, Sarah Palin was so nasty and personal in her critiques of Obama, I can't help but find it satisfying to see her family's dirty laundry get aired all over the place.

Wholesome American values my ass. I wouldn't let my family get within a mile of the Palin's hillbilly psychodrama.