Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy!

[Humanists Harbor]

Hi folks. So a member of my family, who is typically not a nut job, is convinced that Sarah Palin faked her pregnancy, and that she even switched babies at one point. As evidence she sites blogs like this:


http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2010/02/tale-of-two-babies-by-sarah-palin.html

http://palingates.blogspot.com/

They show all sorts of photos and analysis and soforth. On the one hand it feels like they document their claims and make their case very well. On the other hand, it seems COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS. Feels like I'm reading one of those websites where they claim the moon landing was a hoax and soforth. Those guys seem make their case pretty well too, until more rational folks like Phil Plait come along and demolish their claims.

So I wanted to see what you folks had to say. Have you seem these particular claims addressed/refuted? There's nothing on Snopes and my Google skills didn't turn anything up either.

I can't just dismiss the claims, what kind of a Good Skeptic would I be then? But obviously they seem like they have to be horse puckey. What do y'all think, any specific responses to the claims, especially the ones at the first link?

FYI, she says that if the claims are refuted successfully I get to name her soon-to-arrive next child. Any suggestions? I'm thinking of Randall James Hamilton Zwinge whether it's a boy or a girl.

 

[LightinDarkness]

I sometimes think that the belief in this sort of crazy is not actually fueled by a desire to believe in woo, but more by political ideology. The far, far, far left would believe this because they just hate Palin with such a burning passion. We saw this happen with the far left and 9/11 conspiracies, where both the far left and far right united in a conspiracy frenzy over Bush hatred.

Don't confuse the real evidence with the illusion of documentation. Conspiracy sites are very good at providing an aura of authenticity, especially when it comes to photos. That is because public figures like Palin are photographed up to thousands of time a day, and TV footage provides limitless shots where a combination of the clothes shes wearing, the background, and clothes of the audience can easily give the illusion someone not being quite as pregnant as they really are.

People who really want to believe will also some times flat out alter photos. We see this with UFO people all the time. They so desperately want it to be real that they will create photoshop fakes that are very high quality - this is even more likely to be the case when politics are involved.

As a skeptic, there is an avalanche of evidence against this. Its worse than Obama birther conspiracies. Palin was and is a very public figure, even during her pregnancy before she really stepped into the national spotlight, and there are hundreds of people who all think she was pregnant.

 

[headscratcher4]

No, she didn't fake it...she merely went to mombassa to have the baby.

 

[Brainster]

I have always wondered what people thought Palin would accomplish by supposedly faking her pregnancy. Well, she wouldn't have the embarrassment of having her underage daughter being discovered pregnant. Except that she did, of course, because her underage daughter was pregnant. And instead of this happening to an obscure governor, it happened to a vice-presidential candidate in the middle of a campaign.

The timing is pretty awful for the CT nutbars on this as well. Trig was born on April 18, 2008. Bristol Palin gave birth to her son Tripp on December 29, 2008. That's 255 days, or about 8-1/2 months apart. While I am sure this would not be a record for consecutive (non-twin) births by one woman, it's certainly quite brisk.

BTW, don't expect to convince your friend of this. As Swift remarked, you cannot reason a person out of a position that he or she was not reasoned into in the first place. The only point in arguing with a conspiracy theorist is to sway onlookers who are undecided on the issue.

 

[BenBurch]

However, she had NO business flying in that condition whatsoever. Not a CT, just an observation from a parent...

 

[carlitos]

Andrew Sullivan (daily dish) spent the entire election obsessed with this.

 

[Chaos]

I have always wondered what people thought Palin would accomplish by supposedly faking her pregnancy.

I think she would accomplish the same things that Ann Durham would have accomplished by having her baby in Kenya instead of Hawaii.

 

[Humanists Harbor]

Thanks guys. She's registered for her own account but until it's approved she's asked me to post this reply on her behalf.

Okay LightinDarnkness, I take issue with you referring to “this sort of crazy” and your assumption that I hate Sarah Palin. You clearly have not looked at the evidence based on your assumption that photos were doctored. The blogs that are linked had poses with links to photos, most of which came from Alaskan newspapers and the Alaska Governors site (the most telling of which were later scrubbed from that site). So if the Alaskan newspapers and governor’s office are in on the “photo doctoring” then this is one very big conspiracy, no?

This is not an illusion of someone looking less pregnant than they are. This is multiple photos of Sarah Palin appearing very obviously NOT pregnant when she was supposed to have been. Having carried and birthed two babies, both of whom were smaller than Trig Palin’s reported birth weight, let me tell you, there was no baby in there.


I am not a crazy conspiracy theorist. I stumbled upon this whole thing quite by accident. As a skeptic who has looking into this, I can say there is an avalanche of evidence SUPPORTING this “crazy” claim. Allow me to demonstrate that. If you claim there to be substantial evidence against it, why don’t you say what that is?

http://palindeception.blogspot.com/2009/08/whos-not-your-mama.html

 

[Elizabeth I]

No, she didn't fake it...she merely went to mombassa to have the baby.

 

[Unsecured Coins]

Covered it. End thread.



some language.

 

[Travis]

Not wanting to plunge into lunacy just who's baby was it then? Why fake it? Why not use similar subterfuge to hide Bristol's pregnancy?


Offtopic---has anyone seen Bristol lately? She looks better now than pre-pregnancy!

 

[LightinDarkness]

I do not generally reply by proxy because its pointless. But given from the proxy reply I can see this isn't going to go anywhere (we have a True Believer, it looks like), I'll go ahead and then be done with the thread. I used to be willing to debunk the conspiracy theorists over and over, until I learned that no amount of evidence or reason will ever convince 99.99% of them. After all, if they used logic and reason they would not be believers in the first place.

My new policy is only to bother if they show a willingness to look at the issue based on evidence and logic - and the reply shows otherwise.

Okay LightinDarnkness, I take issue with you referring to “this sort of crazy” and your assumption that I hate Sarah Palin. You clearly have not looked at the evidence based on your assumption that photos were doctored. The blogs that are linked had poses with links to photos, most of which came from Alaskan newspapers and the Alaska Governors site (the most telling of which were later scrubbed from that site). So if the Alaskan newspapers and governor’s office are in on the “photo doctoring” then this is one very big conspiracy, no?

You are free to "take issue" but this is a type of crazy to believe that Sarah Palin faked her own pregnancy. For the exact same reason that its crazy to believe that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, or that George Bush plotted to take down the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. It is crazy because all the evidence points to none of it being true.

There is no evidence for this - all you have are pictures of Sarah Palin in baggy clothing and bending over at an angle after she has given birth. In case you were not aware, when the baby comes out a large part of that stomach disappears - which is all easily hidden in a huge baggy sweatshirt.

We are also dealing with someone who doesn't understand how you can take pictures from a newspaper website and alter them. Its called photoshop. Did you even look at the photos? Shes wearing maternity clothes, in black. She even has her hands clasped over her rather large belly 2 weeks before she delivered.

This is not an illusion of someone looking less pregnant than they are. This is multiple photos of Sarah Palin appearing very obviously NOT pregnant when she was supposed to have been. Having carried and birthed two babies, both of whom were smaller than Trig Palin’s reported birth weight, let me tell you, there was no baby in there.

This is called the fallacy of hasty generalization. Your experiences are not the same as every other pregnant women in the universe. All pregnancies are different.

I am not a crazy conspiracy theorist. I stumbled upon this whole thing quite by accident. As a skeptic who has looking into this, I can say there is an avalanche of evidence SUPPORTING this “crazy” claim. Allow me to demonstrate that. If you claim there to be substantial evidence against it, why don’t you say what that is?

You may not be a crazy conspiracy theorist, but you certainly are promoting a crazy conspiracy theory. As I said, this doesn't mean you embrace other woo - it could be that your so far to the left that you are willing to believe any conspiracy theory about people you don't like ideologically. There is no evidence to support this woo, and as multiple people have posted, it is debunked.

 

[carlitos]

Photo analysis seems to be a common current through many of these theories ... JFK, Bigfoot, 9/11, just about everything. Having read "trig truther" Andrew Sullivan throughout the presidential campaign, I can attest that these claims are based on non-evidence.

 

[Zep]

It takes no intelligence at all to get pregnant, unless you are frankly comatose (and even that seems not to be a total barrier, but anyway...). However I suspect Sarah Palin simply would not have been smart enough to fake pregnancy and get away with it successfully.

Assuming, of course, that any of these CT'ers can come up with a single cogent reason why she would have ever wanted to fake pregnancy anyway.

I'm no cheer-squad for Pallin, but this slur on her is just plain nuts.

 

[quarky]

Can we at least agree that she faked orgasm?

 

[Zep]

Hey, I'm a guy! How am I to know!

 

[Brainster]

However, she had NO business flying in that condition whatsoever. Not a CT, just an observation from a parent...

How could anyone think that it's the Right that wants to regulate what women can do with their bodies?

 

[Elizabeth I]

Assuming, of course, that any of these CT'ers can come up with a single cogent reason why she would have ever wanted to fake pregnancy anyway.

This. What possible good could it have done her?

 

[headscratcher4]

Andrew Sullivan (daily dish) spent the entire election obsessed with this.

Too true...and not Sullivan's proudest moment...however, in his defense, he was also railing against the fact that she wouldn't answer press questions and did not make herself available to the press, and a catalog of mistatements and outright verifiable lies that Palin never addressed nor did much of the press pick up on.

I believe Sullivan finally came down on the line that it is unlikely that she didn't have the baby...though circumstances seem to be different than she described...but when she says something publically, it should be held up to public scrutiny...i.e. she got a pass from the press which no one running for high office should ever get.

All in all, however, you are right...he went a little off the deep end with this one.

 

[Humanists Harbor]

There is no evidence for this - all you have are pictures of Sarah Palin in baggy clothing and bending over at an angle after she has given birth. In case you were not aware, when the baby comes out a large part of that stomach disappears - which is all easily hidden in a huge baggy sweatshirt. QUOTE]

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The point is that the photos are said to have been taken while she was pregnant, not after she gave birth. She made that pretty clear. Pehaps we could wait to lump her in with the other conspiracy nuts until after she's, I don't know, had her profile approved and clarified her position? Just a thought.

Ok, I totally messed up the quote feature, I'm not so good at computer stuff.