Political satire is a tricky line, but a writer must realize when he’s walking a tightrope and about to crash. Well, not if you’re Jack Stuef of the political blog Wonkette. On April 18, Stuef published a post titled “Greatest Living American: A Children’s Treasury of Trig Crap On His Birthday” (Ed. Note: the post has been removed). Trig is Sarah Palin’s youngest son, who has Down Syndrome and the post was prompted by a happy-birthday message that Palin posted on Twitter.
In the post, Stuef clearly crosses the line of political satire into a tirade about Down Syndrome, incest, child rape and more. Needless to say, the response to this “celebration” of Trig’s birthday did not consist of balloons and cake. Quickly, an outcry began and many across political lines dubbed the post vile and tasteless, in which I’d have to agree.
And as FOX Nation reports, “Know what doesn’t go over well with advertisers? Making fun of disabled children.”
As a result, Wonkette has lost such advertisers as Papa John’s and Huggies. Both Papa John’s and Huggies took to Twitter, explaining that they don’t support the story. According to the Papa John’s tweet, the company will make sure its ads won’t run on Wonkette in the future and Huggies tweeted, “All — We do not support the @Wonkette story & have taken action 2 pull r ads, effective immediately. TY 4 bringing this issue to r att’n!”
It’s encouraging to see advertisers step to the plate and distance themselves from a post that focuses its attention on attacking a child. No matter how you feel about Palin, what Obama said in 2008 should stick…
Obama said, “Let me be as clear as possible. I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.”
In the post, Stuef accuses Palin as using her son as a political prop, an issue that’s long plagued every politician who has procreated. The Obamas continually stress that their daughters are off-limits, but the girls have repeatedly been in the spotlight. The first lady has included both girls in her anti-childhood obesity and healthy eating campaign and the girls were recently featured in Obama’s new children’s book, “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.”
It’s difficult for any politician to block out their family from their career and whatever any politician does regarding his or her family will always be scrutinized. Palin herself has been criticized for focusing on her career and not her family and now for using her son as a prop.
It’s one thing to criticize a politician for their stand on issues and for their history in office, but when you step outside of politics and attack an underage private citizen, you should find yourself sweating bullets on that tightrope and realize that there’s no place to go, but down.
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Wonkette seems to believe they did no wrong as Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher tried to talk some sense into Wonkette’s editor and Wonkette’s Twitter feed clearly shows they have no regrets.
As a result of the outcry from everyone across the political spectrum, Palin tweeted:
SarahPalinUSA: Big thanks from the Palin family to folks on Twitter today who took a stand for children w/special needs. Happy Easter!Thank you #TrigsCrew
As published at Examiner.com
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