only magazine

↵ home

I hate Bristol for the same reason that I hated 'Juno'

By Chuck Ansbacher

Wednesday September 3, 2008

I remember one time years ago that I had to go to the hospital for fairly unremarkable complications, and wound up sitting in the ER waiting room for about five hours. I had no actual emergency, so I guess they decided I could wait. It was no big deal. But for about two of those five hours, some really annoying shit happened. These two little kids, aged I would guess three and five, basically used the waiting room as their jungle gym — throwing magazines around and tearing pages out of them, talking to people who didn’t want to be talked to and probably shouldn’t have been talked to because they were sick or bleeding or whatever, and basically running amok for almost half of the time I was waiting there. The kids looked ratty and dirty, and their clothes didn’t fit, and they smelled. Their mom was in the waiting room with them the entire time — asleep, or at least unconscious. She didn’t look a day over twenty.

Whenever I think of teenage pregnancy, that is the experience that comes to mind. I know that not all teenage moms are as useless as she was, but I also know that lots are. When I saw Juno last year, my hate for it was steadfast and true. Sure, I moaned through the dialogue as loud as anyone with half a brain did, but the thing that pissed me off about it more than anything else was the unrealistic portrayal of teenage pregnancy it brought to the masses. I assume most of you felt the same way, but obviously, most of America didn’t. Parents unconditionally supporting their child, a father who takes his responsibilities seriously, a jovial pregnancy relatively devoid of complications… all you have to do is watch a half hour of Maury to know how bullshit this all is.

Bristol Palin has now been trotted into the public eye as a proud mother to be. She hasn’t graduated high school yet, and barely looks old enough to drive. Fortunately, just like in Juno, she has the loving support of her retarded family and her dumb sex buddy. Idiots will praise her for keeping the child, but more importantly, young girls will see her, just as they saw Juno MacGuff, and will have a positive image of teenage pregnancy reinforced. Fuck that. To deal responsibly with a teenage pregnancy is one thing, but to celebrate it is an entirely different animal altogether. These people should be ashamed.