Bristol Palin seeks full custody; no comment from 'Ricky Hollywood'

Juicy details about Levi "Sex on Skates" Johnston:

Relations between the Palins and Johnston and his family have frequently been strained since the couple broke off their engagement after their son was born in late December 2008.
Johnston denies in court documents that he has avoided his responsibilities. He is seeking shared custody. . . .
Bristol Palin's custody petition calls Johnston's recent nude photo shoot with Playgirl magazine "risque."
The document also notes that Levi's mother, Sherry Johnston, should not be allowed unsupervised visits with the baby following her drug arrest. Sherry Johnston, who is serving out most of her three-year sentence under home confinement, was sentenced last month on a guilty plea to one count of possession with intent to deliver the painkiller OxyContin.
Palin's custody petition also suggested Levi Johnston may have his own issues with substance abuse, saying he made statements about seeking "weed" on Twitter.
Johnston denies making such a statement, saying the Twitter account "is a fraud" and that he doesn't have an account on the popular online social networking site.

Hey, Bristol, look on the bright side: At least Levi didn't put a knife to your throat. Yet. In a related development, Andrew Sullivan is reportedly seeking custody of Sarah Palin's uterus.

Speaking of gay, if Bristol gets custody, will the judge be investigated for homophobic bias? After all, Levi is so proud to be a gay icon.

The Sour Grapes of Wrath

"In the 21st-century 24/7 cable-TV era, it sometimes seems there are two kinds of people: People who are TV-famous and people desperately trying to become TV-famous. Back when I was a young man with rock-star dreams, losers who wanted to impress you would drop the names of famous record producers who were supposedly interested in their latest demo tape. Nowadays, the same type of people are bragging about how their agent is this close to getting them a 'development' deal for a reality-TV show. But enough about Levi Johnston . . ."

'I felt like taking a shower afterwards'

That's Howard Kurtz, discussing the Vanity Fair interview with Levi "Ricky Hollywood" Johnston, a slimy disgrace to the profession of journalism. Kurtz gets credit from Craig Henry at Lead & Gold.

Levi Johnston will pose in his underwear for a magazine purchased mainly by closeted small-town gay guys

Playgirl wants "Ricky Hollywood":

Funny thing is that Playgirl's biggest get in years doesn't have a clue about who reads the male flesh mag. . . .
Oh Levi, don't be ashamed to go down the gay icon route.

Via Hillbuzz. NTTAWWT.

Hey, has anybody noticed that Levi Johnston is a lying, amoral scumbag?

Because "Ricky Hollywood" just trashed the mother of the teenage girl whom he seduced, impregnated and abandoned.

The scumbag has an agent. The scumbag has a lawyer. The scumbag does a Vanity Fair photo shoot and appears on network news programs. People say they've seen him wheeling around in a brand new $30,000 truck. And other people say the scumbag hasn't bought a single diaper for his own baby son.

Via Dan Riehl and Memeorandum.

UPDATE: Daniel Terrapin at Conservatives for Palin:

It brings me no pleasure to address a habitual liar . . . Pretending for a moment that Levi actually wrote that essay . . .

And then Daniel proceeds to demonstrate the most important fact about Levi Johnston: He's a lying scumbag.

As previously noted here, if that third-rate teenage hockey goon did to my daughter what he did to Sarah Palin's daughter, he wouldn't be available for media interviews, unless Vanity Fair covers seances . . .

UPDATE II: You've got to love Ben Smith's characterization of Levi's lies as "alleged contradictions." Hey, Ben, are you a journalist or a euphemist?

As fans of my blog-memoir All Girls Names Tonya (And Other Lessons of a Misspent Youth) surely understand by now, I have first-hand knowledge of the mating habits of the species scumbaggus adolescens and, having spent years as a small-town sports writer, I also have extensive observation of the habits of that sub-species, scumbaggus adolescens jockus twerpus.

Therefore, at risk of offending the delicate sensitivities of any members of the Victorian wing of the GOP, allow me to list three very important lies that Levi Johnston told:

1. "Bristol, I love you."
2. "Trust me. I won't tell anybody."
3. "Don't worry -- you won't get pregnant."

And next thing you know, Levi's telling everybody in Wasilla, "Hey, I knocked up the governor's daughter!"

Anybody want to argue that I've omitted some exculpatory nuance in Levi's predictable modus operandi? You must first overcome a notable shortage of evidence that Levi loves Bristol, or has ever loved Bristol, or perhaps produce some genuine evidence that Levi is even capable of love.

Good luck with that. I've seen enough selfish narcissitic sociopaths to know one when I see one.

UPDATE III: Dan Riehl knows how to smack a punk:

What else is there to make of a twenty-something punk who buys himself a shiny new truck, while neglecting his baby and not contributing a dime of support? . . . Some dealer in Wasilla might be smart to start thinking repo about that truck about now . . .

Levi has even less of a legitimate career than Kourtney Kardashian's baby-daddy.

Perp-walking Ricky Hollywood's mom

Mom's a felon, and her lawyer is a key adviser to her thug son:

Sherry Johnston pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of possession with intent to deliver the painkiller OxyContin. Five other felony counts were dropped. . . .
She hugged her lawyer, Rex Butler, before being escorted out of the courtroom and taken to a correctional facility where she'll be held until her Nov. 20 sentencing. . . .
Johnston, 42, is the mother of 19-year-old Levi Johnston. He and 18-year-old Bristol Palin were engaged but called the wedding off after their son, Tripp, was born in December. . . .

Q. What do guys in Anchorage call it when they go on a date with Levi Johnston's mom?
A. Taking out the trash.

The Anchorage Daily News Has No Shame

Nor class, nor an editor who has any respect for the decency of his readers, and if there hasn't been a wave of canceled subscriptions since Aug. 1, it can only mean that Alaskans are too stupid to know when they've been insulted.

In his continuing investigation of the "Gryphen"/Griffin saga, Dan Riehl took a look an Aug. 1 ADN column by Julia O'Malley. Dan notices that, O'Malley's fawning column about deadbeat baby-daddy Levi Johnston (a/k/a, "Ricky Hollywood") included a mention of his then-pending trip to New York for a Vanity Fair photo shoot.

Curiously enough, early that same morning of Aug. 1, when the kindergarten-teaching amateur pornography enthusiast Jesse Griffin posted his "Splitsville" piece about the Palins, it included this:

And while I am on the topic of Levi I will also let you know that he did a very interesting Vanity Fair interview in which he divulged a lot of heretofore unknown information. I did not get too many of the juicy details, but my understanding is that Levi was without his handler (Tank Jones) and let some fairly explosive tidbits out. The article will be published in the October edition.

So, on Saturday, Aug. 1, both O'Malley and Griffin were excited about Levi Johnston's Vanity Fair interview. Perhaps mere coincidence, of course. But notice a couple of other things in the same "Gryphen" post:

Now nothing written above should be considered a rumor. My source is very good and I trust that the information is accurate and will be confirmed by other news sources in the weeks to come. . . .
I anticipate much more of this kind of confirmation filtering in as the day goes on. . . . (Emphasis added.)

And then, in his foolish e-mail to Dan:

By the way watch the local Alaskan papers closely for the next week, you may learn something.

That e-mail piqued my curiosity at the time: How does an irresponsible PDS Trig Truther moonbat blogger like Griffin know what stories are going to be in "the local Alaskan papers" in the next week? One of two scenarios would explain this:

1. Jesse has sources in the local media, who are telling him what stories they're working on; or
2. Jesse's sources are also peddling their gossip to local reporters, then telling Jesse about the dirt they're dishing (i.e., "Yeah, wait 'til you see this one . . . The reporter seemed really interested when I told him . . .")

However, giving Griffin's habitual dishonesty, we ought not discount a third possible explanation:

3. Jesse Griffin is totally full of crap and is once again, as one of my best sources said, "making stuff up."

So while it is certainly possible that O'Malley or someone else in the ADN newsroom is talking shop with anti-Palin moonbat bloggers, feeding them tips about rumors that their editors won't let them put in the paper, we can't base such speculation on the word of a notorious liar like Jesse Griffin. Every word Griffin writes is a lie, including "and" and "the," to borrow Mary McCarthy's famous putdown of crypto-commie Lillian Hellman.

Assuming that Griffin has sources other than the voices in his head, there is no particular reason to suspect that O'Malley is one of them. It is far more likely that his libelous smears are based on conversations with someone in the Johnston family orbit, perhaps Rex Butler -- whose name was notably missing from the list of people whom Griffin recently denied as being his sources.

Be that as it may, I have temporarily lost interest in Griffin and have now taken a sudden and keen interest in Julia O'Malley and her editors at the Anchorage Daily News.

If you've read this far, do me a favor: Go grab the text from O'Malley's Aug. 1 column, cut and paste it into a Word document, put it into an easy-to-read font and print it out. (Which is what I did last night.) Then come back to this post in a few hours, when I'll update with a critical examination of O'Malley's journalistic fellatio of Levi Johnston.

Oh, yeah: Dan had insinuated that O'Malley's interest in Johnston might be romantic or even possibly erotic. However, sources tell me that this is unlikely, as O'Malley is believed to be "playing for the other team." IYKWIMAITYD.

NTTAWWT.

Come back for the update . . .

UPDATE 3:20 p.m.: My apology for the delay in my promised evisceration of Ms. O'Malley and the ADN, but other urgent matters required my immediate attention. After a decade in D.C., I learned the danger of allowing myself to be insulted without adequate response, so when I saw I had received an e-mail from a fellow who once did everything in his power to destroy me . . .

How to Reply to a Fool (If You Must)

Please read that, and accept my apology for this unexpected delay in providing the slow, painful dissection of Ms. O'Malley's hagiographic Levi Johnston column. Sometimes a man must break a promise in order to keep a vow.

Ms. O'Malley will have her turn in due time. Please hit the tip jar.

The Palins Are Getting Divorced,As Are Mrs. Other McCain and I

(BUMPED; SEE UPDATES BELOW.) Also, it's entirely possible that George W. and Laura Bush -- perhaps even George H.W. and Barbara Bush -- are heading for "Splitsville," if we accept such "proof" as we find in the latest edition of Star magazine:

"Sarah and Todd are fighting all the time," Mercede Johnston — sister of Levi Johnston, ex-boyfriend of Sarah's eldest daughter, Bristol — tells Star in an exclusive interview. "When they do, Todd often ends up sleeping on the couch at their home in Wasilla. Bristol used to tell Levi that her parents would argue and bicker over the littlest things, like who was supposed to take out the trash or wash the dishes."
Levi, the father of Bristol's 7-month-old son, Tripp, recently told RadarOnline.com that Sarah and Todd have had marital trouble "from day one," and that he believed their escalating problems were the reason behind her mysterious decision to resign as governor of Alaska last month with more than a year left in her term.
His sister Mercede predicts: "If they ended their marriage within the next year, I wouldn't be surprised at all. It really seems to me their marriage is just a sham for the cameras now!"

Ri-iiiight. The trashy sister of that scumsucking vermin Levi Johnston (a/k/a "Ricky Hollywood" ) is such an expert on marriage, y'know.

Feel free to ask Mrs. Other McCain how recently -- and if memory serves, it was week before last -- she gave me the kind of spousal ultimatum that involves an offer to help me pack my bags. We've made it past the 20-year mark, and I'm determined to hold true to my vow of "till death do us part," even if sometimes Mrs. Other McCain also helpfully offers to assist me with the "death" part.

Hang in there, Todd and Sarah: I put my journalistic credibility on the line for you. Like I said this morning:

I don't care if Todd Palin hikes the Appalachian Trail to Argentina or Sarah Palin flies to Vegas and spends Labor Day weekend with the Chippendales dancers. As long as the Palins don't get a divorce, the continuation of their marriage proves that Jesse Griffin is a liar, Dennis Zaki is a floppy-shoed clown, and I'm solid gold, baby.

Think of the children! (And me, of course.) Also, everybody needs to hit the tip jar today, just to remind my wife what a solid-gold guy she married.

UPDATE 3 p.m.: Jesse Griffin denies having anything to do with the Star story:

It looks like Mercede has been talking to them again. And just to put the potential rumor to rest Mercede is NOT one of my sources.

He thus denies an accusation no one ever made. But "Gryphen" already told us who his sources are:

The operator of the Immoral Minority blog admits that he is in regular contact with one Rex Butler and Tank Jones. Rex Butler is the high-priced attorney who is handling legal issues for the Johnston family.

The Rex Butler/Tank Jones angle, of course, leads straight to "Ricky Hollywood," and it looks like the whole grubby Johnston clan is feeding at the same trough of slime:

Butler magically appeared in court to defend Sherry Johnston on her drug-dealing related arrest -- she originally was so broke she had to get a public defender.

Which, of course, leads directly to the Florida headquarters of . . . the Star:

How does Sherry Johnston afford an attorney like Rex Butler? How do the Johnstons get the money to zoom around the United States giving interviews? How do they pay their rent/mortgage or even the payments on Levi Johnston's truck . . .
Airplane tickets from Anchorage to Los Angeles and New York run a minimum of around $700 per person, and that doesn't include hotel stays and other transportation. Trips from Anchorage to Florida, where Mercede Johnston claimed (on Larry King's show) to have traveled in March, are running around $1200 round trip.
They have claimed on television that they are not receiving compensation for their appearances. So what gives? Levi has no job, his mother has no job, his sister has no job, so who is paying for this "Smear Palin" tour? If you recall the Larry King interview with the Johnstons, you will remember that Mercede Johnston mentioned that she had recently returned from Florida. Why Florida? Well, Florida is where Star Magazine has its headquarters. Hold on a second, Mercede gave an interview to Star Magazine!

You see? It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure this out: The Star is paying its sources, just like the Enquirer pays its sources, which creates a sort of commodity market for anti-Palin dirt in Alaska. As I said:

Meanwhile, here is Jesse Griffin, one of the left-wing Alaska blogospheric myrmidons who've spent the past 11 months trashing Palin online for the amusement of PDS-affected "progressives" worldwide. Now that Palin's resigned as governor and the spotlight has shifted, the blog-o-bucks are harder to get for the Alaskasphere, and everybody -- ex-staffers, "Ricky Hollywood," Griffin, his blog buddies -- is trying to cash in before the sell-by date expires on this dirt-dishing bonanza.

So what you're seeing here, as any Hayekian would surmise, is a final frenzy of activity before the closing bell on the Anchorage Slimeball Exchange.

UPDATE 3:45 p.m.: Oh, it keeps getting better and better, as Griffin updates to assist with the process of elimination that increasingly seems to point the finger at Butler and/or Jones:

Also I did not talk to either Mercede OR Levi before I made my post, and I called some of the other media outlets working this story and asked them if the Johnston family was one of their sources and they said no. So when the Palin-bots come after this family I am here to tell you it just another example of attacking the messenger instead of addressing the validity of the information.

Meanwhile, we learn that last October, Rex Butler was smearing Palin as a racist:

"Blacks don't have the levels of access to the governor and state commissioners as with past administrations," said attorney Rex Butler, an Alaska resident since 1983. "It seems the posture of (Palin's) administration with Blacks is: Don't need them—don’t worry about them."

I'm betting that Butler's financial status is not entirely opaque. Interesting things might turn up in that regard. "Means, motive, opportunity," as they say, and I wonder if the Alaska bar association might be interested in the question of whether Butler's been playing the role of a libel broker in the Anchorage Slimeball Exchange, in which Jesse Griffin seems to have been such an active participant. Keep updating, Jesse!

Expect further updates . . .

NBC Reliable Source: Ricky Hollywood!

Yes, when respectable mainstream journalists like NBC's Ann Curry want the authoritative word on Republican Party politics, they know who to call: High-school dropout, unemployed has-been hockey jock, the world's most famous deadbeat dad . . .

MEET RICKY HOLLYWOOD!

OK, so who's the bigger laughingstock: Curry or her source? Talk about someone whose 15 minutes of fame should have ended 16 minutes ago . . .

And can anyone now doubt that Pat Buchanan had the right answer to this problem?

(Hat-tip: Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: Troglopundit has the perfect match for NBC's new political correspondent. And if Meghan McCain and Mr. Hollywood don't work out, his next conquest . . .

Pat Buchanan's Very Excellent Idea

Via Hot Air:

The problem with Pat's approach is that it's far more humane than this punk deserves. As I've said before, the big mystery to me is why Levi Johnston's horribly mutilated corpse hasn't been fed to a pack of wolves.

Levi Johnston: 'Mindless bag of hormones'

So says Laura at Pursuing Holiness, discussing the latest interview from the Bristol Palin baby daddy:

"Abstinence is a great idea," he said, "but I also think you need to enforce, you know, condoms and birth control and other things like that to have safe sex. I don't just think telling young kids, you can't have sex, it's not going to work. It's not realistic. " ... It's a great idea and a great message she's trying to send out to the world and all the young kids. It's not easy raising a baby. But I do think there's more things to it than just not having sex."

Yeah, Levi, but if you had stuck to the "just not having sex" part, you wouldn't be famous now, would you? You'd still be just some small-town jock chasing tail in Wasilla, and CBS News would never want to interview a nobody loser like that.

I remember back when the news broke of Bristol's pregnancy. My first post about it was critical of Bristol, even more critical of Levi Johnston, and yet more critical of the way the story was handled by the "media strategy geniuses" who were busy doing what they do best, running the Republican Party off a cliff. There is a right way and a wrong way to handle a scandal in the New Media age, and Republicans haven't figured it out yet, because they're too busy paying gazillions of dollars to "media strategy geniuses" who never worked a day in the news business. But we digress . . .

Many of my conservative readers excoriated me for daring to criticize the Romeo and Juliet of Anchorage. But (a) that's just the way I roll, people, and (b) I know enough about 17-year-old boys to recognize Levi Johnston for what he is.

Yeah, big-deal hockey star, doin' the governor's daughter, braggin' to all his buddies about it. There was a reason, you see, that when the media flew up to Wasilla, every other person they talked to was telling them about Levi and Bristol. Because that's the kind of guy Levi Johnston is.

Dimwit losers like that are a dime a dozen.

But a conservative isn't supposed to say such things! Blame everything on the evil "media"! As I noted even before we knew Levi's last name:

Little Miss Attila refers to the press as "jackals" and "bottom-feeders." Hey, it's their job, OK? By this time tomorrow, you'll have Levi's full name and biography, you'll know how he met Bristol, etc., etc. You'll read it. You may feel guilty about reading it, but you'll read every word of it.
Will you be grateful to the reporters who dug up those facts? No. Some poor shmuck of a reporter is even now knocking on doors in Alaska, getting rude responses and threatening gestures, in order to satisfy your pathological curiosity, and you diss him as a "jackal." Fine. Don't read the story when Drudge puts a siren on it tomorrow.
But you will read it, won't you? So, who's really the bottom-feeding jackal here?

Facts are facts. Any journalist who is halfway intelligent and stays in the game a while will learn secrets he can never report, because you don't burn a source. You are always skeptical of "the story too good to be true," and so when I saw the Republican spinners portraying the fairy-tale romance of Levi and Bristol . . . well, I shut up.

Nobody wanted to hear my appraisal of the situation. I focused on other stories and just let the whole Levi and Bristol business go on to its sorry, and utterly predictable, denouement. None of the nice, respectable Republicans who were telling me not to criticize Levi back in September will ever say now, "Hey, you know something? He was right." And what did I tell you Feb. 5, 2008?

[John] McCain is not a conservative, he will lose in November . . .

I was right about that, too. A guy gets tired of being right all the time, and watching fools prosper.

Bristol Palin calls Baby Daddy Levi 'white trash'

Well, this little bit of tabloid gossip is helpful, isn't it? A source says Bristol broke up with the teenage sperm donor Levi "Sex on Skates" Johnston two months ago, won't even let him see the fruit of his loins, and has denounced the entire Johnston family as "white trash."

I love Sarah Palin, but Bristol's judgment is questionable. Really, Bristol: What do you expect people to call a girl who gets herself knocked up by white trash? This does not reflect favorably on you.

UPDATE: Noting the negativity of some of the comments, but didn't realized I'd been linked on this by Videmus Omnia at Conservatives4Palin:

As a final note, I am very disappointed in our friend R. S. McCain. Do all McCains like to stick the knife into Palins when their backs are turned?

Sorry, I'm not wired that way. I support Sarah Palin. But if Bristol Palin is conducting herself in such a hideous manner, I'm not going to turn a blind eye and pretend it's not happening. I've got three teenagers of my own, remember, and if they act disgracefully, my judgment would be quite harsh indeed.

Read what I wrote about the role of lax discipline in the apparent decline of evangelical churches. I am not a violent or brutal person, but neither do I believe that indulgent condescension is an appropriate way to instill character in the young. In sharing some unsavory details of my own tragic adolescence, I should hope I made it clear that I understand the potentially disastrous consequences of wrong choices and bad companionship.

It is not kindness to a wayward child to shelter and protect them when they are doing the wrong thing. While the full circumstances of the situation are of course not known to us, doesn't it seem that Bristol is going out of her way to bring shame and disgrace to her parents? And what about Levi Johnston, the hockey stud? Am I the only one who thinks that his role in all this has been of a selfish, shallow cad?

I would call to your attention the difference between Michael Reagan, older son that Ronald Reagan adopted with his first wife, Jane Wyman, and Ron Jr., the natural son of Reagan's second marriage to Nancy. If you talk to people who knew the family, the cause of the difference between the two sons is obvious.

As a boy, Michael felt somewhat "second best," and had a deep hunger to win his father's admiration and acceptance. Michael went through some wild years, but in his maturity, he was a respectful, dutiful son. By contrast -- and Reagan admitted this privately to friends -- Ron Jr. was treated with too much favoritism as a child, and thus grew up arrogant and disrespectful.

A child's misconduct always reflects poorly on the family. I'm sure that Bristol is breaking her parents' hearts by her shoddy behavior. But I'm thinking back to some TV interview Bristol did, and if she demonstrated an attitude of humility and remorse, it didn't stick in my mind.

Why would anyone think it was helpful -- to her, to her parents, to the GOP or to the conservative cause -- for conservatives to pretend that everything with Bristol is just hunky-dory? If my kid was acting like that, would a true friend ignore it?

And since Videmus Omnia brings up the subject of Crazy Cousin John, how do you think his daughter Meghan got such an impudent attitude? Way back years ago, when I was a single fellow, there was a type of girl I labeled "Daddy's Little Darling."

Maybe some of y'all know the type -- snooty, stuck-up, cliqueish, insufferable demanding, with a high-handed and disdainful way of dealing with people beneath her status, having a self-important attitude.

Once, after I'd been covering sports in Calhoun, Ga., a few years, I was at the season-opening high school football game. Before the game, I was talking to a group of non-football athletes -- baseball, basketball, wrestling -- who were hanging out by the end zone. This girl comes walking up, apparently attracted magnetically to a cluster of high-status students.

So she managed to find an opportunity to introduce herself, "I'm Heather So-and-So." Yes, OK, fine nice to meet you, but there wasn't any recognition on my part, because the only kids I knew were the ones who played sports. Seeing that I wasn't impressed, the girl then repeated her name, "Heather So-and-So. My dad is Jim So-and-So, he owns So-and-So Carpet Outlet."

If that wasn't the tackiest thing I'd ever heard! But that's the "Daddy's Little Darling" attitude, and it's always a source of misery. Whether that has anything to do with the original subject from which I have sadly digressed, you be the judge.

Video: McCain greets Palin family

Raw video from Associated Press, notice him talking to baby daddy Levi:



"We're going to fight back," Maverick says. And the (oddly optimistic) Allah says, "Before this story's done circulating, Maverick's standing with the base is apt to be at an all-time high."

Any time Allah gets optimistic, something strange must be going on.

Levi Johnston: 'Sex on skates'

New York Magazine:

We'll have a roundup of pundit reactions later, and we're sure that you have your own points of view. . . .
We have a different question: HOW HOT IS THE BABY DADDY? . . . . Look at that face. John McCain is definitely winning the cougar vote now, on top of the Jamie-Lynn Spears vote.
Johnston is basically the quintessential example of that guy who you are constantly worried is going to impregnate your daughter (and occasionally does). He's a handsome stud, an athletic star, and he has a criminal record.

OK, I've been getting a lot of grief for slogging Levi "f---in' redneck" Johnston on an earlier post, mainly because I figured by knocking up Bristol Palin, he was helping Obama. But traffic is through the roof with people Googling for "boyfriend Levi Johnston" and so I'm sensing that this might go the other way.

Between "Sarah Palin bikini pics" and this young studpuppy shagging 17-year-old Bristol, the choice of the VPILF has added a sexy factor to the GOP ticket. America loves a good soap opera, especially the R-rated kind on HBO where the studly teenage hockey player is getting jiggy with the governor's jailbait daughter.

Brangelina, Britney and K-Fed, Levi and Bristol -- look, if the American people want "The OC" at the Naval Observatory, who am I to argue? So I'm beating Ace to the punch and jumping to the front of the line for Google hits for "Levi Johnston hung like a moose." Also, if anyone has photos of Levi Johnston in his underwear, send 'em on.

I'm a capitalist blogger, and traffic is traffic.

UPDATE: Getting lots of e-mails from people weighing in on the issue, mostly seeing the human-interest side of the story. Conservatives definitely seem to be rallying in support of Bristol Palin, and so Team Maverick may come out ahead on this after all.

Despite my ribald reaction to all this, I am a father of six (including three teenagers) and I do believe that babies are a blessing, not a "punishment." And long before I'd ever heard of Bristol Palin, I said "thank God for Jamie Lynn Spears" and blogged about my favorite famous teenage mothers. So those of you supporting Bristol, I'm on your side.

However, I'm also a journalist writing about politics and as such, I have to wonder how this is playing with the undecided swing voters out there. (Obama just hit 50% for the first time in Gallup's daily tracking poll.) Does the sudden eruption of distracting chatter about Palin's family make Team Maverick look incompetent? Was she properly vetted? What does this decision say about Crazy Cousin John's executive judgment?

Politics ain't beanbag. The Democrats and the MSM smell blood in the water, and I have no idea what the result will be Nov. 4. Maybe, just maybe, the story of how "Bristol Gone Wild" got knocked up by Levi "f---in' redneck" Johnston will strike a sympathetic chord in the American psyche, finally bringing out a pro-life majority.

Stranger things have happened, I suppose, and God moves in mysterious ways. But at this point, objectively, I'd say a Republican victory in November would be a miracle. Conservatives need to spend more time praying, and less time hassling capitalist bloggers who are guilty of nothing more sinister than shameless traffic-baiting.

UPDATE II: Just checked with Dr. Melissa Clouthier, who confirms that Levi had totally got the I-want-to-have-his-babies factor working in his favor: "He's hot," says Dr. Melissa.

UPDATE III: As much as studly young Levi brings out Dr. Melissa's inner cougar, Little Miss Attila says she's more eager to see shirtless photos of Todd Palin. Yeah -- chicks dig the rugged, macho, 40-something dudes. I get that all the time.

Bristol Palin's boyfriend, Levi Johnston

Musclehead 18-year-old hockey player:

Doe-eyed Bristol Palin, 17, and ruggedly handsome Levi Johnston, an 18-year-old self-described "f---in' redneck," have been dating a year, locals in Wasilla, Alaska, told the Daily News.
And the pregnancy? An open secret in the close-knit town of 9,780. . . .
On his MySpace page, Johnston proudly declares: "I'm a f---in' redneck."
"I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing," he says on the site.
He also warns that if anyone messes with him, "I'll kick ass."

Way to go, f---in' redneck. Your f---in' stupidity might have just elected f---in' Obama.

By the way, in my column today, I predicted it would take less than 24 hours for the press to ID Mr. Teen Inseminator, and they did the job in barely 12.

UPDATE: Somebody just e-mailed me this touchy-feely blog post about the Palin family, and it merely infuriates me:

I wish her and her husband-to-be and their baby safety and joy. And as much privacy as they can find. I intensely admire both her decision to choose life, and her decision to further sacrifice her privacy in order to support her mom for the betterment of our country. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the end of that.

Don't you people realize that politics ain't beanbag? You're up against the Democratic Party and the MSM, and they're not going to cut you any slack. This is the biggest possible game for the highest possible stakes -- the presidency of the United States -- and all your tender-hearted concern for two teenagers in love isn't worth squat in such a situation.

Send me no more such sentimental gush. It's worse than useless at this point.

UPDATE II: The Washington Post put no fewer than five reporters on the story, including one who knocked on the door of Johnston's family home in Wasilla. Did Team Maverick warn the Palin family about this?

UPDATE III: An anonymous commenter says I should "be ashamed" for "laying a trip like that on" Mr. Baby Daddy. Why? Because he's a teenage jock? C'mon, who doesn't know how teenage jocks behave? Do you really expect me to believe that Levi "f---in' redneck" Johnston wasn't bragging to all his buddies about nailing the governor's daughter?

Why do you suppose Bristol's pregnancy was "no secret" in Wasilla, hmmm? Because that musclehead braggart told everybody in town, that's why. And I should be "ashamed" of denouncing this cretinous hoodlum? Make. Me. Laugh.

UPDATE IV: Jeralyn Merritt has started a pool on when Sarah Palin will resign from the ticket. I don't think that will happen. Team Maverick is aware of the Eagleton precedent, and they know there's no second chances on the veep pick. For better or worse, they've got to ride this one out.

UPDATE V: Levi is "sex on skates." This kid might be the new pro-life poster boy because, apparently, lots of teenage girls (and some older ladies, too) would love to have his babies.