Let's read Andrew Sullivan's new Sarah Palin post.

Here's the post:

It's getting worse. This is a classic:

"The Palins have no intention of providing a ratings boost for David Letterman by appearing on his show. Plus, it would be wise to keep Willow away from David Letterman," PalinPAC spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said Wednesday.

So Letterman is a child abuser for making a tasteless joke?

Sullivan seems to miss that Stapleton just made a child-rape joke. It's a joke! Well, it's a joke is not an apt excuse — is it? — when the joke is supposed to work based on a shared belief about the butt of it.

Stapleton's joke depends on seeing Letterman as someone who's enthused about the rape of children — or at least the children of politicians we don't like. By the same token, Letterman's joke worked to the extent that the audience shares the belief that Palin's daughter is a big slut.

Neither joke is any damned good. Letterman is a creep for making a girl the butt of his joke, and Stapleton is an idiot for trying to show that she can joke too and cranking out another dose of child-rape humor.

But the surrealism and narcissism of the Wasilla nutcase is what stands out:

"First, remember in the campaign, Barack Obama said, 'Family's off limits. You don't talk about my family.' "And the candidate who must be obeyed, everybody adhered to that and they did leave his family alone. They haven't done that on the other side of the ticket and it has continued to this day so that's a political double standard."

So brandishing a special needs infant as a campaign prop was putting your family off-limits? Pushing your own daughter into the klieglights to divert attention from your own fantastic lies is family-protective? Pushing Bristol Palin into an absurd abstinence campaign to gin up support from the Christianist right is looking after your kids? Palin reaps what she sows. And she clings to any whisp of victimhood like the attention-starved celebreality star she really is.

Now, this is absurd. Nearly all politicians display their families. Do they brandish them? Brandish means to shake or wave (as a weapon) menacingly/to exhibit in an ostentatious or aggressive manner. Occasionally, one reads of some criminal swinging a baby around like a cudgel, but with politicians, the displaying of the family is non-aggressive and without any weapon connotations. Obama displayed and continues to display Sasha and Malia in the conventional political way, and I'm sure Sullivan would be steamed if anyone mocked them or said anything sexual about them.

Bristol Palin's abstinence effort seems pretty silly to me too, but there's no reason to view that as opening her up to all sorts of vicious mockery. She found herself in an awfully uncomfortable spot. It's embarrassing enough for a teenager to become pregnant by accident, but to endure this in the crossfire of a political campaign had to be excruciating. But she put up with it somehow, didn't take the out of abortion, kept smiling, and tried to turn herself into a good lesson for others. How is this sowing something that she deserves to reap?

Or — oh — it's Palin who reaps what she sows. Is the girl not a person worthy of any regard? What did the girl do? "Family's off limits. You don't talk about my family." Obama said that. It was intended to bind his harshest opponents to a standard of behavior. Sullivan offers absolutely no reason why the same principle does not protect Palin's family.

And why should the governor of a state be called an "attention-starved celebreality star"? Is it because you don't respect her as a politician? You might call everyone with the nerve to run for President/Vice President an attention-starved celebreality star, but the fact is you don't. Apparently, it's because she's got kids who do things that you think we can sit back and view as objects of idle amusement. If anyone is to be a politician — in your nasty little world — their kids better toe the line and stay perfectly prim and healthy and smart (or hide).