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Why Are Some People So Fixated on Sarah Palin’s Pregnancy?

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There is a really fun discussion going on in my Stupidometer post between Brad Scharlott, the person who is planning to publish yet another boring book that will obsessively analyze Sarah Palin’s most recent pregnancy, and your favorite blogger. For those who are interested in why some people have this decidedly unhealthy obsession with Sarah Palin’s reproductive apparatus, let me explain how this works.

Between the ages of 2 and 3, a child goes through what is known as the Oedipal stage of development. This is a moment when the child begins to formulate his or her gender identification and figure out his or her place within the relationship between his or her parents. If any sort of trauma accompanies this stage of development, the child will remain fixated on this stage and will keep replaying the “Mommy, Daddy, and I” drama over and over again.

People who never managed to pass successfully through this stage of development are the same folks who always end up being part of love triangles. Have you ever met a woman who always seems to fall for married men? That’s where her issues come from. At the same time, such people also see figures as authority as their absent Mommy and Daddy. They endlessly rummage in the personal lives of politicians, movie stars, etc. because this allows them to relive their Oedipal crisis over and over again. Have you ever met a man who seems obsessed with when Sarah Palin’s water broke?  He is simply manifesting his profound desire to stick his head under his Mommy’s skirt. The same individuals who promote the insane Babygate stories are also hugely interested in whether Sarah Palin and her husband will get married or divorced and whether there has been cheating in their marriage. They seem to hate Todd Palin even more than they do Sarah Palin, which fits perfectly with a textbook description of the Oedipal fixation.

This is why we need to be very attentive to our children in the crucial years of their development (between birth and 3 years of age.) People who don’t manage to pass successfully through any of the developmental stages will relive the trauma for the rest of their lives. And then you will see those sad middle-aged folks dedicating their existences to endless discussions of politicians’ uteri.

22 responses to “Why Are Some People So Fixated on Sarah Palin’s Pregnancy?”

  1. Z Avatar
    Z

    I’ve got Oedipal trauma though, and it doesn’t manifest in those ways.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      There is also a response to the Oedipal trauma that manifests itself in being drawn to much older partners. I’m not suggesting this about you, of course. I’m just saying that you are right, other responses are also possible.

      I’m a huge oral fixation person myself, though. 🙂

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  2. Isabel Avatar
    Isabel

    I followed some of the links after your last post on the subject. I even forced myself to read a few reviews of some book about her – “Rogue something or other” – that was supposedly crammed with shocking facts that would forever change my opinion of Palin.

    One example, a revelation that supposedly was very damaging to her marriage was that she had a one night stand with a famous football player. When they were both young and single it turns out. Wow, shocker!

    Another “shocking revelation” was that sometimes she was too tired to cook dinner and the older kids made mac’n’cheese while she took a nap. Yes, I am quite sure that male politicians never do such horrible things!

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Yes, I read those, too! The best analysis was the one that claimed that Palin is secretly in love with Obama because he reminds her of the football player. This is why she supposedly “picks” on Obama. These folks are a psychoanalysts wet dream. They are so textbook it hurts. 🙂

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      1. Isabel Avatar
        Isabel

        And those were literally the most serious lapses the author could come up with, or at least that I could find before I was too bored and disgusted to continue reading. The evidence for how she and Todd are horrible neighbors was almost funny; I was skimming very quickly through a lot of links and comments so I might be wrong about this, but I got the impression that the author of the “Rogue” book actually bought the house next door to the Palins so he could spy on them and write the book, and then he wrote about how they were not very nice neighbors, LOL.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          And how exactly is this author different from all those crazies who rummage through movie stars’ garbage bins?

          And how about all those people who keep blogging about the super important “revelations” in this book? One of the revelations is that Sarah Palin apparently likes peanut butter cookies or something like that. Oh, what a horrible person! How dare she like them!

          This is INSANE.

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          1. Isabel Avatar
            Isabel

            Yes, I was also shocked to see the number of blogs dedicated to hating Palin, or more specifically, to alerting the world of the great danger that she represents. And on every otherwise obscure anti-Palin blog, every single post has 200-300 very excited comments, with many including tons more links. This is not some isolated phenomenon, as weird as it is. I hope the feminist blogs have been following this.

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            1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
              bloggerclarissa

              What danger, is my question? She isn’t even running for office! There are so many politicians in the Senate and Congress who are an actual danger but it isn’t like anybody even seems to care. And you are right, those blogs seem to be super popular. Whenever I see the number of excited comments every insane anti-Palin post receives, I always feel very sad that there are so many completely unhinged people out there.

              I’m glad to see reasonable, intelligent people post comments in agreement with me on this issue! Thank you, Isabel.

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  3. el Avatar
    el

    *This is why we need to be very attentive to our children in the crucial years of their development (between birth and 3 years of age.) *

    What do you mean by “very attentive”, except treating a child right in an obvious way to everybody? I don’t think it’s all parents’ fault. Especially considering that when both parents work 9 to 5, a child spends min 75% of his awake time with others. Of course, parents are very important, but others play a huge role too in this scenario.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      “others play a huge role too in this scenario.”

      -No, not really. Until the age of 3, it’s all parents. I don’t think it makes sense to discuss the issue in terms of anybody’s “fault.” It’s just something that people need to be conscious of to understand their own way of being.

      Let’s take the example of a person who constantly diets, then slips, then diets again. S/he could spend his or her entire life going through the cycle of gaining and losing weight. Or s/he could go in a different direction: realize s/he has oral traumas and deal with them. Of course, psychoanalysis is not the only way to compensate for this kind of trauma. Art, religion, nature, etc. can all provide useful ways to compensate.

      But realizing that “I can’t lose weight / quit smoking / stop falling for married women, etc.” don’t have anything to do with will=power, smoking, food, and women, is the first crucial step.

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        *No, not really. Until the age of 3, it’s all parents. *

        Even if a child spends 10% of its’ time awake with them?

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          Of course.

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          1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
            bloggerclarissa

            I also wanted to add that in one’s subconscious world, parents are not actual people, they are psychic figures that you invest with qualities and significance completely apart from what they actually are. On of the greatest surprises of any individual psychoanalysis is how different one’s imaginary parents are from real people who are one’s parents.

            You don’t know what you are unleashing here, dear commenters. 🙂 This is one of my favorite hobby-horses, and once I start, I will not be stopped. 🙂 🙂

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  4. Isabel Avatar
    Isabel

    I’m also curious, is this Freudian theory backed up with modern evidence? And what sorts of trauma – involving the parents directly, or any trauma? We moved when I was 2 and 1/2, and I was apparently very upset about it.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Nobody uses Freud today. A lot has been done since him, and everything he did has been massively improved on.

      As for your personal experiences, the contributing factors can only be figured out on an individual basis.

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  5. rumpydog Avatar
    rumpydog

    I think they REALLY wanna know who’s the baby’s daddy!

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  6. ninjanurse Avatar
    ninjanurse

    Sarah Palin’s pregnancy would never have been such a controversy if she had not given the Anchorage Daily News a wild account of how she hopped on a plane after her water broke instead of going to the nearest hospital.
    She really is dangerous. Her putting crosshairs on Rep.Gabby Giffords did not directly cause a mentally ill man to go wild with an assault rifle, but violent talk in a gun-happy country increases the chances that some loose cannon will fire off.
    For the record, I don’t care at all who she boinks– it’s her record in politics that is the scandal.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      So she told a weird story about her pregnancy years ago. So what? Who cares?

      The point you make about her violent political statements is certainly valid. This is what should be addressed instead of when her water broke.

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    2. Anonymous Avatar
      Anonymous

      No she didn’t put any crosshairs on Rep. Gabby Giffords and I strongly disagree with that statement. I also disagree with you about the violent talk and NO I’m not pro-violent talk, but I do know about mental illness. The guy was/is mentally ill and university officials got wind of it. I didn’t like all the politicizing after the shooting and think it inappropriate and I also think it inappropriate to point the finger at her for his actions. His actions were his own and those actions were driven by mental illness. Do you understand? If you don’t like her or her politics that is another issue.

      The issue with him was/is mental illness and her politics have absolutely nothing to do with his mental illness.

      If you want to know more about it (mental illness) then I would urge you to see the 60 minutes coverage about it as they ran a segment and interviewed his friends who knew something was different and wrong with him. In fact one of his friends, when he heard about the shootings, thought that he did it and was the shooter.

      I would also encourage you to look up a website called NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). The website is http://www.nami.org

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  7. NancyP Avatar
    NancyP

    Some* right wing** men have a decidedly Kinder – Kuche – Kirche (sic)(kids, cooking, church) concept of the capabilities and proper roles of women. These men have some cognitive dissonance – Palin is a very popular woman in conservative circles, and is treated as a political contender. I suspect that the Palin pregnancy obsession is one way for these people to try to take her down a notch to “just a woman”.

    * or “The majority of”
    ** and left wing too!

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    1. Isabel Avatar
      Isabel

      Are these sites really right wing? Why would they be trying to take her down so desperately then? I assumed they were extreme left wing nuts, however they don’t seem to be very progressive…

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        The ones I quote position themselves as very left-wing. Which is why I say they are all hypocrites. I’m very disappointed to see all this vile sexism from people who claim to be progressive.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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