Republican kids' media battle
Updated on 25 May 2009
The Republican party may have lost its way, with none other than Dick Cheney emerging from the shadows to become the right's most prominent spokesman, but it's the next generation who are suddenly making all the headlines, writes Felicity Spector.
Kids - don'tcha just love 'em? Pick up this week's People Magazine and there's a doe-eyed Bristol Palin on the cover, clad in full graduation gear, clutching her five-month old baby son.
In an exclusive photo spread, the teenage single mom declares: "If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex, trust me. Nobody."
Indeed 18-year-old Bristol has also been doing the rounds promoting the whole idea of sexual abstinence as the new 'teen ambassador' for The Candie's Foundation - an organisation advocating the prevention of teenage pregnancy. Hasn't the poor kid been through enough?
Just 24 hours earlier John McCain's feisty blogger daughter Meghan (pictured far right) condemned Bristol's (pictured far left holding son Trig) abstinence tour as "unrealistic for this generation".
In a typically outspoken appearance on the Colbert Report, she announced: "I wouldn't want to practice anything I didn't preach".
However it seems frankness gets you nowhere: Ms McCain, who also blogs on her own website McCainBlogette.com attracted a whole swathe of opprobrium for her view, especially after she described herself as a "24-year-old pro-sex woman".
The New York Times was particularly cross. Judith Warner describing her "pitying sort of sadness" for Meghan McCain, dismissing her as "all perky and blonde and blushing and young, and endowed with a soapbox years before you've paid your dues".
Undoubtedly that's true and having that famous last name has certainly opened doors unavailable to most 24-year-olds.
But McCain has managed to survive all sorts of snarky criticism about her appearance, her weight, even her love life and her recent column for The Daily Beast is not only considered and thoughtful, but downright radical.
She explains why gay issues are so important to her, appealing for the GOP to get past its anti-gay rhetoric: "championing a position that wants to treat people unequally isn’t just un-Republican. At its fundamental core, it’s un-American."
You may not agree with everything these young pretenders say. You might cringe at Meghan McCain's perky cheeriness, and blush over the parading of Bristol Palin as poster child for sexual abstinence. But their right to speak out? Not at question.
And hearing from these young women is surely better than those suddenly ubiquitous appearances by Dick Cheney.
