Levi Johnston Lashes Out at Sarah Palin -- Can You Blame Him?

By Sarah Seltzer, AlterNet. Posted September 5, 2009.

Levi Johnston, former Sarah Palin accessory and newfound media personality, leveled some low blows at the grandmother of his child in this month's Vanity Fair.

In its pages, already being excerpted in splashy headlines across the Web, Levi casts Palin as a hodgepodge of stereotypes that feed into the sexist rumormonger's playbook: a bad mom who takes hourlong baths, wears Wal-Mart pajamas in the daytime and doesn't cook for her kids, a money-hungry, narcissistic diva, a grabby woman who tried to take her daughter's baby as her own. Oh, and a wife who doesn't sleep with her man.

Many readers are saying that his words are so extreme, they feel sorry for the former Alaska governer, who despite parroting the sexist, anti-choice policies of the extreme right wing, has taken a staggering amount of unfair, sexist criticism.

It's vital to call out misogyny even when it's directed at our ideological archenemies, and feminists like Alternet's Adele Stan and the Frisky's Jessica Wakeman correctly point out that this latest piece in the so-called liberal media plays into woman-bashing tropes without context or explanation.

Why did Vanity Fair ask Johnston to write about "Mrs. Palin" alone and not his entire experience in the political realm?

But it's hard to get too worked up about Johnston's boorish posturing. Johnston isn't just a typical hanger-on trashing a famous figure to stay in the spotlight -- he's a teenage kid who was used in an abysmal way.

During the Republican National Convention, he and Bristol Palin were cleaned up, shorn, put in fancy clothes and literally paraded in front of a live and TV audience of millions. No one can forget how often the cameras on all the networks swung over to the Palin clan, zooming in on these two somewhat-dazed-looking teen parents-to-be.

The McCain/Palin presidential campaign literally effected the transformation overnight, turning two probably scared kids into the poster children for the anti-choice movement.

Levi and Bristol's suddenly upcoming nuptials were announced with fanfare, and they were applauded in a loud, public way for deciding to carry through with the pregnancy and get hitched. They drove the delegates and the right wing wild and the media wilder.

Their very personal decisions were manipulated to beef up Palin's Republican-mom credentials. She and her handlers played up her image as a mom who had taught her kids, and by extension their partners, to make good traditionally conservative choices. For many, that alone gave her the bona fides to be a great VP candidate.

But by purposefully making the Palin family and Palin's sainted motherhood a huge part of her appeal, and by putting their teenagers' faces on countless screens (teenagers by nature tend to have a twisted and needy relationship to public attention), the campaign created the conditions for a perfect storm.

They also left room for the family to be mocked, imitated, questioned and examined, turned into punchlines and Halloween costumes, something other public families, including the McCains have strived hard not to do. In one fell swoop, Bristol and Levi were given a massive dose of fame's pleasures and its pitfalls.

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Sarah Seltzer is an RH Reality Check staff writer and resident pop culture expert. Sarah is a freelance writer based in New York City. Her work has been published in Bitch, Venus Zine, Womens eNews, and Publishers Weekly among other places. She formerly taught English in a Bronx public school.

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