BUT DON'T YOU DARE BRING HER FAMILY INTO IT!

Good Lord, people, have you seen this endless, People-like New York Times front-page story about Sarah Palin's pregnancy?

While political reporters essentially have to go on bended knee to request an audience with Palin, her people have clearly told everyone she knows that they are to talk at endless length about her pregnancy, and provide any and all documents relating to it. The result, from the supposedly liberal, hostile Times, is essentially an evangelicals' version of a Lifetime movie.

Sarah Palin's baby shower included a surprise guest: her own baby. He had arrived in the world a month early, so on a sunny May day, Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, rocked her newborn as her closest friends, sisters, even her obstetrician presented her with a potluck meal, presents and blue-and-white cake.

Most had learned that Ms. Palin was pregnant only a few weeks before. Struggling to accept that her child would be born with Down syndrome and fearful of public criticism of a governor's pregnancy, Ms. Palin had concealed the news that she was expecting even from her parents and children until her third trimester.

But as the governor introduced her son that day, according to a friend, Kristan Cole, she said she had come to regard him as a blessing from God. "Who of us in this room has the perfect child?" said Ms. Palin....

Get out your hankerchiefs!

The story goes right at the question of Palin's concealment of her pregancy ("'All of a sudden she had this penchant for really beautiful scarves,' recalled Angelina Burney, who works across the hallway from the governor in Anchorage") -- an issue the McCain people surely want to be brought up again, in the hope that it will remind people of the whose-baby-is-it? rumor spread by those evil Angry Left bloggers.

And did I say "documents"? Yup. We get an e-mail we're told SuperPalin had the energy to send to her friends even after giving birth prematurely following her now-famous trip to Texas for a GOP governors' conference, during which she was leaking amniotic fluid -- and the e-mail (if you're an evangelical) is a doozy:

Later that day, Ms. Palin sent an e-mail message to her relatives and close friends about her new son, Ms. Bruce said. She signed it, "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

"Many people will express sympathy, but you don't want or need that, because Trig will be a joy," Ms. Palin wrote. She added, "Children are the most precious and promising ingredient in this mixed-up world you live in down there on Earth. Trig is no different, except he has one extra chromosome."

We also get this (re-reported) TV-melodrama detail:

Inside Ms. Palin's room, her daughter Willow, 14, immediately noticed her new brother’s condition, according to People magazine. "He looks like he has Down syndrome," Willow said. "Why didn't you tell us?"

Music swell. Fadeout. Cut to commercial.

Be very afraid, folks. The press thinks it can provide this kind of fluff at great length and then keep readers in the room for sober discussions of whether Palin has the qualifications to serve. The McCain people, on the other hand, think this is so compelling, so tearjerking, so full of pluck and spunk and gumption ("'To any critics who say a woman can't think and work and carry a baby at the same time,' she said, 'I'd just like to escort that Neanderthal back to the cave'") that it will utterly drown out any traditional discussion of Palin's qualifications (and, for that matter, drown out any discussion of creaky old McCain's qualifications).

I wish I thought the McCainites were wrong about this, but I fear they're right.