Columnist Michael Graham, Now Out of Both Sides of His Mouth

Last month, I wrote up a little news analysis piece for Brain, Child about the media coverage of the seventeen expecting teenagers in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They’re the ones who supposedly had a “pact” to get pregnant and raise their babies together, except that, whoops! There wasn’t any evidence a pact existed.

Anyhoo, I watched a youtube clip of conservative columnist and talk radio host Michael Graham skewering the school system that supports teenage mothers by providing services like day care. He also called the mothers-to-be “stupid” and got his undies all in a bundle on his blog:

“What [Dr. Brian Orr, who advocates for birth control without parental consent] and the Gloucester schools have done is to encourage the idiotic notions in their girls' heads that they are mature and responsible enough to be making these decisions. They are "choosing" (pause for a moment of sacred chanting from feminists) to go get pregnant and become moms at the age of 16. That is their "right" (pause again for cheers from opponents of abstinence-based education). Parents? They don't need no stinkin' parents. … And as a result, these girls will soon have a taxpayer-subsidized bundle of joy.”

Well. That was so two months ago. Now teenage pregnancy isn’t idiotic. It’s … “normal.”

Graham in the Boston Herald today:

“[VP hopeful Sarah Palin’s] daughter’s pregnancy highlights another part of Palin’s appeal. Her normalcy. Here’s a woman who has run a business, raised a family, who is sending a son off to Iraq, who has another son with a disability, and now has to help her teenage daughter face motherhood. These are experiences that millions of American moms have shared, can relate to and understand.”

Dude. Let’s now pause for the enormous whooshing noise your backpedalling makes.