"Bristol Palin was fixing a loose clip or an errant strand of hair for her mother...."

Oh! The injustice! Will the persecution of Sarah Palin never cease!

ADDED: "Over the past month, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) has quietly altered her case for the presidency in a savvy shift of rhetoric."

Kathy Griffin joked that Bristol Palin is fat.

"She's the only contestant in the history of ['Dancing With The Stars'] to actually gain weight... She's like the white 'Precious.'"

Griffin, who just turned 50, was showing off her super-thin body in a bikini on stage. But check the rear view...



... always check the rear view, ladies.

Bristol Palin gets sarcastic on Facebook about Keith Olbermann.

After he called her "the worst person in the world."

"Now I am scared I am going to wake up with a decapitated moose head in my bed..."

Says Margaret Cho, possible evincing the guilt she really ought to feel.

What Sarah Palin is doing to her children.

The ratings are up for "Sarah Palin's Alaska." Oh, that's so sad for the people who exulted last week when the ratings were down. I skipped last week myself, but I watched this week's show. It was pretty cool seeing the Palins hauling in fish nets, slicing salmon into strips, tying the strips with string, and hanging them up in a smokehouse, with Todd's Eskimo grandmother demonstrating how to set up the fire to get the smoke just right.

I was touched by Sarah's interaction with Trig and with another boy with Down Syndrome (a member of her extended family). It made me cry and it made me think about this post by Andrew Sullivan criticizing Sarah Palin for combining motherhood and a career in national politics:

Anyone one who genuinely cared about the privacy of her kids would have either said no [to the vice presidential nomination] or been extremely careful to release the information as soberly as possible....

[S]he parades a special needs infant in front of the press, dangles him half-naked in front of book tour crowds, uses him constantly as a rhetorical campaign prop, and cites him at almost every speech to appeal to pro-life voters....

What Palin has done with her young children is unprecedented. Think of how Obama strictly protects his daughters, and how George W. Bush did the same. 

Think of how the press — including you — regards those daughters as off-limits but goes after Palin's daughters.

What Palin has done is use her children, having failed to actually rear them. She is still doing it on her reality show. That she has gone so far as to use and thereby abuse a child with Down Syndrome whose interests are clearly in seclusion, careful nurturing and care, and constant parental attention, tells you a huge amount. 

Seclusion? Is that right, tucking those kids away from the rest of the society? Why not be out and proud?

Bristol Palin: "Going out there and winning ... would be like a big middle finger to all the people out there that hate my mom and hate me."

Awaiting the results on "Dancing with the Stars."

UPDATE: And the winner is...



Jennifer Grey. Bristol comes in third. Kyle Massey was second.

Sally Quinn — who says "Dancing is my religion" — denounces Bristol Palin's success on "Dancing with the Stars" as "unholy."

And this strangely sanctimonious journalist — she's writing in the always awful "On Faith" section of The Washington Post — condemns Palin voters for "cheating" 7 paragraphs after she confesses to doing something that is at least as much cheating as what the Palin fans are said to be doing.

My husband and I are "DWTS" fanatics.  We plan our social life around it, often regretting invitations that fall on the night of the show....

Ridiculous!

Not only that, but I vote.  Under the show's rules, you're allowed to vote five times on one line. I have six lines at home and my cell, so I vote as many times as I can for my favorite. 

So this lady, this longtime Washington powerbroker, has 6 phone lines, and she maxes each line out, each week, voting 30 times. But that's the show's rules. They can't tell how many individuals vote are voting. They can only see phone numbers. So if your family of 5 watches the show and you — you economic losers — only have one phone, you can make 5 calls. Sally Quinn happens to have 6 phone lines, so she gets 30 votes — under the rules.

This season, I'm voting for Jennifer Grey all the way. She is by far the best dancer on the show.

She's voting correctly. For the best dancer. You stupid people are voting for Bristol Palin. Lord knows why.

.... Brandy - a fabulous dancer -- was eliminated last week. She was definitely my runner up. (Jennifer has to win. She's head and shoulders above everyone else.) We were having a dinner party and I made my guests leave the table to watch the final half of DWTS. Norman Lear was with us. Norman is not a DWTS follower but got caught up in the moment too. As the music started and I waited breathlessly to see Bristol be told she was out. I was squeezing Norman's hand when Brandy, not Bristol, was sent home. I couldn't believe it. Neither could the judges and studio audience. Derek  and Jennifer's mouths dropped open. Boos could be heard.

Oh, the social life I'm missing! Norman Lear! Ah! And I'm stranded out here in the heartland where I can only imagine the sparkling, witty conversation. Perhaps: "The American voters are pretty damned stupid"... that sort of thing.

It seemed Bristol and her partner were just as surprised. Brandy cried. I have to confess I teared up. It just didn't seem right.

Bloggers, columnists and TV commentators jumped on the results.  There must be cheating going on, they said.  It was all a tea party plot. That could be the only explanation for this appalling miscarriage of justice.

Sarah Palin's detractors point to the Christian right as the culprits here. The say groups organized voting schemes to game the system and were telling each other how to cheat when voting at ABC.com.

Commenters on the conservative blog Hillbuzz.org said they had figured out how to enter more votes than the rules allow by creating fake e-mail addresses. One person posting on Hillbuzz said "Lord have mercy, I voted for three hours online! I got 300 in."

What is a "fake e-mail address"? The rules say you are allowed 5 votes from each email address, just as you are allowed 5 votes from each phone number. Some people have multiple phone numbers and some have multiple email addresses. What's the difference? All I can think of is that you have to spend money to have multiple phone numbers, and you can get multiple email accounts free. It feels so right for rich folk to get more. I love when liberals slip up like that.

I never remember all Ten Commandments off the top of my head, but there should be one that says, "Thou shalt not cheat while voting on 'Dancing with the Stars.'" Polls have shown that the majority of tea party members are conservative Christians. Are these Christians who are voting 300 times and not using valid email addresses? Doesn't it offend their sense of fairness, if not ethics and morals?

Well, that whole paragraph offends my sense of reason. You're just assuming that the votes are coming from Christians, imagining that these Christians pontificate about morality, and accuse them of cheating when they seem to be following the same rules that let you vote on 6 phone lines? You're blind to your own hypocrisy, even as you have a platform in the Washington Post where you can preen and try to look like you have something especially important to say about religion.

Anti-Palinites lay into Bristol Palin, who performs tonight in the "Dancing With the Stars" finale.

Feel the hate:

Palin, described by one online poster as “a block of wood in a dress,” is the easily the worst hoofer to ever make it to the finals in “Dancing’s” 11 seasons.

Her most remarkable trait is her ability to drift off in a fugue state while dancing....

In mixing a political figure amid its celebrities, the No. 1 prime-time show shot itself in the foot. A Palin win Tuesday night will prove connections trump talent. What celebrities will want to sign up in the future?...

Expect a lot of blather tonight about “the journey.” It’s a way to anticipate and temper the controversy over a Palin victory.

Whatever happens, keep your firearms locked up. Don’t follow the example of the Wisconsin man who shot up his TV last week after watching Bristol dance.

That's a Boston Herald columnist, a grown man, attacking a teenager... for dancing. Somehow it's an injustice if Jennifer Grey doesn't win. Jennifer Grey, supposedly she's a nondancer, eligible to be a contestant even though she danced famously in a very famous movie about dancing. Bristol wasn't even an entertainer, but she stepped up and exposed herself to all manner of embarrassment, trying to dance in front of an audience for the first time. And it's not as if Jennifer Grey has relied purely on dancing. Grey — with strong help from the show — vigorously milked emotions over the death of Patrick Swayze on "Dancing With the Stars." So I don't want to hear any of this "fairness" crap.

ADDED: Bristol was a teenager when the season began. She turned 20 in October.

Abstinence... "It has the word ‘abs’ in it."

Bristol Palin and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino do a pregnancy-avoidance ad.

As Bristol Palin makes the DWTS finals, the anti-Palin forces say look over here: It's Willow Palin's "homophobic rant."

The 16-year-old Palin was hanging out on Facebook:

Willow's target, a person named Tre who goes to school with the Palin kids, wrote a status update on the night of the show's premiere, which read "Sarah Palin's Alaska is failing so hard right now."

Willow quipped back, "Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I've seen pictures of, your disgusting ... My sister had a kid and is still hot," referring to her 20-year-old sibling, Bristol.

She later added, "Tre stfu. You such a f*ggot," and "I'm sticking up for my family," TMZ reported.

Bristol then came to her family's defense, writing to Tre, "You're running your mouth just to talk sh*t."

Do decent people read a 16-year-old girl's Facebook page? But we've read it, so let's at least be decent enough to be fair to teenagers. It's common and casual speech to use the words "gay" and "faggot" like that. It upsets upright people, and it would better if the kids didn't do it — or so it seems, as we look down on the young from our lofty adulthood.

We might say that anyone who cares about gay people should strike those words from their vocabulary. But not everyone who hasn't already laundered their speech of those offensive words is "homophobic." (And not everyone who has, isn't.) You're "homophobic" if you actually feel antagonism toward gay people. There's absolutely zero indication that Willow has any negativity at all toward gay people. She's just pissed at Tre and talking like a teenager (or a "South Park" character). To tar her as homophobic is like saying if you call someone an "idiot," you hate persons with Down Syndrome.

So leave Willow alone, you creeps. And in saying "creeps," I mean no antagonism toward arthropods.

If we should be talking about the Palin kids at all today, we should be talking about Bristol. A complete underdog, Bristol Palin made it to the finals of "Dancing With the Stars." She had no experience as a performer, certainly not as a dancer, and it's incredible that she kept going at all, as the judges and others either tore her down or — when they saw the votes flowing in? — were modestly supportive. Week after week, she landed at the bottom of the judges' scores, but she made it up time and again as regular people called in enough votes to overcome the disadvantage the judges had imposed.

This week, the people bumped her ahead of the judges' darling Brandy:

Last night, Bristol Palin made the finals of Dancing with the Stars, and I think nobody was more shocked than Brandy, who got eliminated. Brandy was so shocked she didn’t even congratulate Bristol! Brandy really wanted that spot; in face earlier in the show, they had shown us a video tape of her saying how much she wants it, and that she “humbly” thinks she deserves it. Most people would agree with her, but Bristol beat her out anyway.

So whatever the reason: Tea Party Conspiracy, Brandy’s arrogance, Bristol getting all the teen votes, Bristol working her “butt off,” or Mark Ballas’ incredibly good teaching…the question remains: Can Bristol win DWTS season 11?

Maybe she will! Congratulations to the shy, unassuming teenager who didn't particularly ask to be thrust into the spotlight 2 years ago, who went through an accidental pregnancy in front of millions of people (many of whom didn't mind insulting her in any manner they found amusing), who didn't hide herself away in shame, and who tried, again, in front of all of us, to dance. How many of the people who snipe at her, are too big of a pussy to dance anywhere, including on crowded dance floor at a local club?

Yeah, I said "pussy." Does that make me a misogynist?

"Bristol Palin’s dancing on TV set off man in standoff..."

In Black Earth, Wisconsin.

According to the [criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court], [Steven N. Cowan, 66] and his wife were watching “Dancing with the Stars” when Cowan jumped up and swore as Bristol Palin appeared, saying something about “the (expletive) politics.” Cowan was upset that a political figure’s daughter was on the show when he didn’t think she was a good dancer, the complaint states....

Cowan went upstairs for about 20 minutes and returned, demanding his pistols, which had been taken by his daughter about a month ago for safety reasons. He was carrying a single-shot shotgun, which he loaded and fired into the television...

UPDATE: Bristol makes it to the finals.

"'Sarah Palin's Alaska' Breaks TLC Ratings Record," "Refudiate" is the word of the year, and Bristol is still on "Dancing With the Stars."

Hmmm.

Sarah Palin says: "Just dominate! Just take over!"

And I've been practicing how to stick my tongue out in the middle of the word "scandalous":



(As for the crappiness of the video, deal with it.)

On "Dancing With the Stars," they really try to get Bristol Palin to smile...

... but even with an ape mask over her head part of the time, we see far too much of the poor girl's sad face:



Even when the judges come up with some nice things to say about her dancing, she can't smile. Please, let the girl go home! If you can bear — or ape — to watch the whole clip, you'll hear her, toward the end, say "I hate the jive." She means, presumably, the dance they were doing, "the jive." But wouldn't it be awesome if she were awake enough to mean all this bullshit I've been put through since as long as I can remember?

"'I go around and I talk about abstinence and then I'm here in my underwear doing a dance about sex and stuff, so hopefully it goes well -- hopefully I can pull it off."

Oh, Bristol.

By week four, we can pretty much say that Bristol has never looked happy to be here and we're beginning to suspect that somebody else talked her into doing this gig to serve, well, somebody else's ambitions. Bristol keeps bringing up the Big Contradiction in the Room, and she does it again tonight, in a rerun clip from Monday: "I go around and I talk about abstinence and then I'm here in my underwear doing a dance about sex and stuff, so hopefully it goes well -- hopefully I can pull it off," she's heard to say as we see her, wearing only a large white shirt and opaque stockings, preparing for Monday's dance. We can see her future speaking engagements: "Don't be like me girls. Don't get pregnant -- and don't go on celebrity dance competitions!"

I'm here in my underwear...  hopefully I can pull it off...

By the way, I really wish I'd titled this post "Let's take a closer look at that fleshy display."

Do you see her?

It's Sarah Palin, in the audience on tonight's "Dancing With the Stars":

"For now, let’s just assume that Palin’s dance was a ... complex critique of the Obama administration’s stance on the homeless."

Hmm.

Sarah Palin on "Dancing With the Stars" — and allegedly booed.

She looked beautiful, and the crowd is ready to cheer her when the camera is on her, so we can only guess what caused the booing that was heard from backstage. Whoever uploaded this video asserts that the audience booed Sarah. I don't think so. The smarter opinion says it was about the scores the judges gave to Jennifer Grey.

Bristol danced last and, again the song was a "mama" song. Last week, you may remember, she danced to "Mama Told Me Not to Come." This week it was... ugh!... I can't remember. Something about not having sex at too early an age. It wasn't "Mama Said"... which is the only other "mama" song that comes to mind at the moment. Bristol's not very good, but she's perfectly nice and has no attitude of entitlement whatsoever and she's taking the dancing perfectly seriously, which — I think I can tell after watching the show twice — is the way to win the support of the judges and the viewers who vote.

"There will be high security tonight when Sarah Palin shows up to watch daughter Bristol perform on 'Dancing with the Stars'..."

Watch with me? It's on in a few minutes.

7:02: Wow! Crazy lights! Crazy cleavage! And now, the stars must walk down stairs! They seem powerfully challenged by the stair walk. Margaret Cho — tee hee, Margaret Cho is on — pretends to trip, probably to be funny, but maybe because she was going to trip anyway and needed to fake it. Bristol is all bundled up in a weird spangled gray blazer. Hasselhoff is here — representing the dissolute. Florence Henderson is here — representing the geezers. Is Bristol a "star"? She's identified as a "teen activist," which I guess she was, as a walking (dancing) anti-sex counterexample.

7:12: Audrina Patridge has sexiness going on here (judge points crotchwards) and beauty going on here (judge points facewards) and they aren't really connected. But she's got just the right body for the show, we're told. So... giant breasts. I think dancers look better with small breasts. Actually, they look more connected.

7:15: The NFL guy (Kurt Warner) says he has big shoes to fill (a past winner was an NFL guy), and I note that Warner has tiny feet.

7:25: Kyle Massey, an actor. So far, I'd never heard of any of these people. Massey shimmies and gets his moobs all jiggly. The lady judge acts like that gets her hot.

7:35: Rick Fox. A basketball guy. Never heard of him. Sorry, I FF'd that.

7:40: Next is Margaret Cho. "You're doing it like you're sitting in the bathroom doing number 2," her partner informs her, helpfully. She's got a gold pleated cape that she suddenly unfurls into a vortex as the music hits the chorus: "We are the champions, my friends." Then, she gets comically tangled in it, and her partner "saves" her. Oh, it's hard to pull off comical dancing. I don't think that's for beginners. But this is the only one I'm watching straight through. Maybe because I like the song. Ugh, she falls on her ass (on purpose) to end it. We see her much-mocked mom, applauding. Oh, no, the judges had to ask if it was supposed to be comic. I think the criticism should be that you have to be really good, first, before you can pull off comedy. The judges just tell her to dance without any comic stuff. Dumb!

7:57: Oh, lord. It's a 2-hour show. Now: Brandy. Heard of her. Wholesome. Boring. I need to let the DVR get out ahead of me so I have room to FF. Haven't live-blogged a reality show in a long time. Oh, Sarah! Look what you've done to me!

8:02: Bristol time! The song is "Mama Told Me Not to Come." Because you know you can only get pregnant if you have an orgasm. The more references to Sarah, the better, they seem to think. She's going to "dress up like her mom." People only know her because of her mom. Her partner tells her: "Just have fun and go balls out." The point of the gray suit is to suddenly rip it off and be wearing a short red dress and demonstrate what is "not the way to have fun," per Mama. See? She's the activist by counterexample. The judges are pretty nice to her. Mama is not there though. But Florence Henderson is next, and she's bringing the Mom.

8:16: Flo, who is 76, is eager to show us she's feisty and talks dirty. She is not Mom, she implicitly screams. She's has pretty legs.

8:25: Michael Bolton demonstrates the principle that being able to sing does not include being able to dance. He's earnest and charming. I can see that the point of this show (which I've never watched before) is for the celebrities to get us to like them. But I don't think it's good to be the guy that made me notice that. On the plus side for Bolton: It seems much easier to be a female novice shown off by a male professional than the other way around. The guy is supposed to lead, so the structure of the competition is inherently unfair. But, as the judges admitted (to FH a moment ago), it's really an entertainment show. So, I guess, watching the big, awkward men get it together amuses folks.

8:43: What are the rules of this competition? Why is Jennifer Grey on? She's most well-known for a dancing role. And the song is a song from that movie. And her co-star in that movie recently died. And we see her burst into tears over it. "It took me back in a time capsule... and I was with Patrick." Too manipulative. Not fair. But it's entertainment. Entertainment is not fair. There's no fair in entertainment.

8:46: We are informed by one of the judges that Patrick Swayze is watching the show from Heaven. Another judge — the one that said the head and crotch of Audrina were not connected — is telling us — through tears — that there is "such a connection." Ugh.

8:53: Hasselhoff is last. He whines. He hams it up. I confess I laughed out loud. Judge Bruno: "It was like a potpourri of insanity disguised as dance."  Okay. It's over. Whew! Time for hamburgers.

ADDED: I forgot to blog The Situation. He forgot to rehearse. We're even.

AND: Hasselhoff reminds me of Lorenzo St. DuBois — Dick Shawn.

Bristol and Levi...

... the reality show.