SARAH PALIN LOVES ATTENTION MORE THAN SHE LOVES HER UNMARRIED, PREGNANT DAUGHTER

I realize the gist of the story has been lost in a murk of rumormongering, but let's not ignore one basic fact: Sarah Palin was, and could have remained, an obscure governor of a small state -- but she chose to become one of the most famous, and thus most scrutinized, women in America at a time when she knew her unmarried seventeen-year-old daughter was pregnant.

What the hell is wrong with her? What the hell is wrong with her husband? What the hell is wrong with John McCain?

This is a judgment issue. It's not unlike what John Edwards did, when he put himself forward as a presidential candidate knowing his infidelity was there to be exposed -- was he crazy? He thought he could conceal the story. Maybe Sarah Palin did too. But now she's exposed her daughter to this scrutiny, all because she has an excessive desire to be a political star.

The more I read about Palin, the less I respect her. There's just something too calculated about the way colorful life details just so happen to slip out every time a reporter talks to her. There's nothing wrong with ambition, but she's trying to soft-news her way to one of the important, serious jobs on the planet, and she might pull it off. And now this give it an extra twist: She wants the big time badly enough that she didn't say to the McCain people, "Look, we have a situation in my family and we're not going to have our dirty laundry hung out in public that way."

Would I say this if she were a man? Hell yes.

And yeah, I downplayed the Edwards infidelity -- in one of my dumbest posts ever. He was an idiot -- and a bad parent of young children -- for choosing to go forward. So is Palin.