I've been talking with my 9th-grade daughter about Sarah Palin's pregnant 12th-grade daughter. It's a conversation I've been having for a couple of days (and which I expect will continue for another day or two). Last night it occurred to me to ask my daughter if she knew exactly who Sarah Palin was. She did. I asked her if she knew why Sarah Palin was in the news. She did. I asked her what she thought about it. She told me. She mentioned things I hadn't talked about. I'm not sure how she arrived at her views, but her understanding of the issue struck me as more firmly based in reality than what I've read from dozens of posters on the internet. I asked her to write down her thoughts about Sarah Palin – and here's her essay:

Why Sarah Palin Was Chosen
John McCain is the Republican running to become Pres of the United States. He has chosen Sarah Palin to be his VP but we don’t know anything about her except she's a woman from Alaska. What's wrong with this picture? Shouldn't we know more about the person who may very well be the next Vice President? I mean the only real thing that's been said is that she has a teenage daughter who's a senior in high school that's pregnant.

McCain knew all about Palin's daughter being prego before he chose her to run with him. I think he may have done this because he's all against the whole abortion thing, so having Palin's daughter want to keep the baby & marry the father is going to help his fan basses go up. I also think that he chose Palin because she's a woman. Since Hillary ran to be in the President I think that McCain thinks that if he has Palin with him he'll have a better chance of becoming President. What I'm trying to get at here is that I think the whole thing is just dumb.