BUT ... BUT ... THAT WOULD MEAN PALIN WAS IRRESPONSIBLE!

I detest Sarah Palin, but I don't like Trig trutherism -- and please don't try to turn me around on this. I wish Andrew Sullivan would let it go, and I'm happy that Justin Elliott of Salon is working to debunk it. I'm pleased that he's found a lot of people who confirm that Palin was pregnant before Trig's birth, and I'm pleased that even Frank Bailey, who's about to publish an angry book about Palin, confirms that she's the mother. Trig trutherism is nonsense and accomplishes absolutely nothing for our side, while it allows right-wingers to play moral-equivalence games anytime we point to their many, many dangerously nonsensical beliefs (Obama birtherism, climate change denialism, fear of imminent sharia in the U.S., etc., etc.).

Of all the "evidence" the Trig truthers present, this (from the Geoffrey Dunn post that was recently rejected by the Huffington Post and published by Henry Blodget at Business Insider) seems the silliest:

Palin was scheduled to make a speech at an RGA energy conference in Dallas on April 17, slightly less than eight months into her pregnancy....

I cover the ensuing details of Palin's so-called "wild ride" from Texas back to Alaska in considerable detail in my book, but in short--according to information she gave at a news conference immediately following her return--Palin claimed that she called her physician in the middle of the night from her hotel room in Texas to discuss what Palin referred to as "amniotic fluid leaking." Despite the presence of this fluid--a strong indicator of impending birth and which potentially exposed Palin and her child to infection--Palin stayed in Dallas and delivered her speech later that day.

Rather than getting checked at a nearby hospital in Dallas before her departure (Baylor Medical Center was less than ten minutes away), Palin and her husband commenced on their return flight home to Anchorage via Seattle. They did not tell flight attendants of Palin's medical situation. The failure of the Palins to inform airline personnel of her impending medical situation ... put her infant and herself at risk.... As The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan ... dubbed it, Palin's decisions were "reckless beyond measure." ...

And on and on through her decision to give birth in the Mat-Su Valley after a seven-hour drive, in a hospital without a neonatal ICU, rather than in a better-equipped hospital in Anchorage, sparing herself and Todd the drive.

Is all that irresponsible?

Yeah. And?

Did I mention that it's Sarah Palin we're talking about?

Of course she would give a speech even as her water was breaking. Of course she'd make the adrenaline-junkie decision to drive seven hours to her 'hood rather than give birth in a well-equipped big-city hospital. She's Sarah Palin!

And that I intend to be the last thing I ever say about Trig trutherism.