What does the slow start for 'Life's a Tripp' mean for Bristol's career prospects? Can she and Willow become the Klondike Kardashians? And why did Sarah bring up my research on air?

My day job is working as a professor of mass communications and journalism; in that role, I teach students, for example, how the TV/cable business works. So I am professionally interested in Bristol's new reality show, "Life's a Trip," on the Lifetime cable network.

I can see why the decision-makers at Lifetime liked the idea of this show. The production costs of any reality show are low compared to a scripted show; and the costs of this particular reality show must be low compared to, say, "Jersey Shore," which has a much larger cast. So for a relatively small investment, the producers could test the waters and see if America's fascination with the Palin family was strong enough to keep a reality show like Bristol's afloat.

Also, I think the producers were wondering if Bristol, along her sister Willow, who seems to be a regular on the show, might replicate the success of the Kardashian girls – Kim, Kourtney, and Khloé – who have achieved great success in the reality show "Keeping up with the Kardasians."

Alas, Bristol's show has gotten off to a slow start. Its initial rating were so weak that it was quickly bumped out of its prime-time slot. The reality of Bristol's life as depicted in the show thus far has not been riveting, according to reviewers, although the mechanical-bull-riding scene and subsequent confrontation with a rude heckler sounded like pretty entertaining stuff.

Confession time: I almost never watch TV, except snippets via YouTube or Hulu. But someone sent me a link to Bristol's last show, because Bristol was shown talking to Sarah via a cell phone, and Sarah was talking about me: she told Bristol that a "professor" had placed ads in Alaska newspapers trying to get to the truth about Trig's birth – the point being to suggest disbelief that anyone could think Trig's birth was faked. It's true that I placed such ads early in the year, but they produced no results.

Sarah clearly wanted to use her daughter's show to suggest my research is nuts, and that's par for the course: I'm trying to expose her birth hoax, and she's trying to keep the truth from coming out. I'm not surprised she did that.

But what did surprise me was that I found her daughters, as least as revealed in their on-screen personas, to be quite likable. They're smart, engaging and pretty, and they seem like they might be fun to be around. That did not make me want to watch the show at any great length, but it does make me think Bristol and Willow just might be able to become the Klondike Kardashians.

This reality show of Bristol's may not last long. But I think she has achieved a critical mass of fame, plus has the drive and the shrewdness (presumably from her mother), to keep opportunities coming her way. Willow does not have much of a track record yet, but she is arguably even prettier than Bristol, and I suspect she'll be able to ride Bristol's coattails to success, just as Kim has been able to pull Kourtney and Khloé along in her wake of celebrity.

Celebrity is a curious thing in our culture. At some point you become famous mainly for being famous, like the Kardashians, and that fame alone can sustain a career if you have some modest attributes such as likability and physical attractiveness. 

And something else Bristol has going for her is that she presumably appeals to a conservative viewing demographic that yearns for stars outside of the usual liberal Hollywood orbit. In that regard, Bristol might be viewed as the anti-Kardashian, and as such she may be capable of filling a need for some entertainment providers.

I think Bristol has reached the point where she will continue to find opportunities for years as an anti-Kardashian avatar. And she may help not just Willow but eventually Piper (if this is what she wants) achieve some modest success in the fame machine that feeds our media and entertainment industries. 

And if that happens, far be in from me to criticize the Palin girls for taking advantage of the opportunity Sarah’s crazily careening career has afforded them.

Did Levi screw up in his book by telling the truth about Tripp's expected date of birth, thus showing Sarah lied at the Republican National Convention?

Levi Johnston lies a lot in his book Deer in the Headlights. For example, on page 75 he supports Sarah Palin's entire "wild ride" story about flying from Texas to Alaska as her amniotic fluid was leaking. In fact, I suspect Sarah told him what to write here: 

She [Sarah] wanted to be home rather than deliver in Texas so that her new son could be a true-blue Alaska boy. She wanted this child, possibly a Down's baby, to be delivered by her doc, who knew the deal, in our new medical center in Wasilla.

The idea that Palin and her doctor preferred, for the delivery of a premature special-needs child, the dinky Mat-Su Regional Medical Center over, say, the fully-equipped Providence Hospital in Anchorage, is ludicrous. She needed to get to the Mat-Su center because she knew that her buddies on the board would let her use the place for a birth hoax. But Levi not only backed that up silly story, he describes what Sarah looked like immediately after giving birth (page 76).

As the wonderfully perceptive Allison noted at ThePalinPlace blog last October, Levi subtly slipped into his book a scene in which Palin called him seemingly to cajole/bribe/threaten him into something terribly important – such as not exposing the hoax (page 273):

Levi, this is Sarah.





No Shit.



Are you recording this?



Huh? What?



Don't lie to me. Are you taping this call?



She sounded uptight...



No, Sarah. I'm not.



Are you positive? Tell me the truth.



Sarah, you called me. How could I be recording this? And why? I have no idea what the hell you want.

Then Levi moves on without revealing the substance of the call. Allison argues the circumstances suggest this call from Sarah probably came not long before Levi's book was due to go press, perhaps shortly after Bristol's Not Afraid of Life came out in June of last year. Considering how Bristol trashed Levi in that book, Sarah must have wondered just how vindictive Levi might be.

What could Sarah offer Levi to keep him from telling the truth? Well, she has plenty of money, and maybe it would not have taken that much, relatively speaking, to get him to lie. She perhaps also could have threatened (by use of police surrogates) to make life hell for his mom, who was and still is under house arrest for selling part of her OxyContin prescription.

I think Allison nailed it. Levi was letting us know he had the power to decimate Sarah's reputation, and that she felt compelled to approach him to make a deal, or more likely to reinforce a previous deal. Of course, by demonstrating his power in that way, he was also letting us know his book could not be trusted. Sad to say, but Levi's a naive kid who sold his self-respect in a Playgirl spread and apparently his integrity in a deal with Sarah.

Various commentators have picked apart Levi's book and shown problems with his timelines. But one problem in particular I want to focus on is where (on page 137) he writes that on about December 26 he agreed to go on a snowmobiling trip with Bristol's dad, Todd, because Bristol, he said, was not due for another three weeks, meaning around January 17 – and then she surprisingly went into labor the next day, and he rushed back to be there for the birth.

He must have screwed up there in terms of making his narrative square with Sarah's, because if Bristol was not due until mid-January or so, then Sarah lied at the Republican National Convention in September, claiming that Bristol was five months pregnant – she would only have been four months along if she was due in January.

But was the snowmobiling trip really in late December? Let's assume for the sake of argument that the trip happened as described, but around the first or second week of January – and let's also assume Levi inadvertently revealed the true due date, around January 17. That scenario seems to work with the known facts.

But I don't buy that he got back in time to witness the birth. The Palins clearly schemed to get him out of the way – that surely was the point of the snowmobiling trip, since Todd could not stand Levi. That being the case, why get him back in time for the delivery? The Palins likely were already planning to kick him out of their house, which he says they did right after the birth. Thus they probably tricked him into missing the birth to help cut him off from Tripp – just as setting up his mother in a drug sting helped sever the link between the families, plus gave Sarah a club to keep the Johnstons in line.

Then what do we make of Levi's claim that he demanded an epidural for Bristol before the birth? I think that Sarah, when she kicked Levi out of the Palin house in early 2009, probably made her initial deal with him and told Levi to lie and say he had been present for the birth. She may even have suggested that he claim he demanded an epidural, which Levi seemingly bungled by suggesting it was given in the first hour of labor, which seldom if ever happens. 



Later in 2009, Sarah said that Levi was not at the birth at all, which I think was a screw-up on her part: she was so intent on trashing Levi at the time, she forgot that she needed him to be a false witness to the birth, and thus let the truth slip out.


So, that's my hypothesis: Tripp was not born in December, but rather in January. Levi was not present, but Sarah needed him to write in his book that he got back in time for the birth. 

But I could be wrong.

One nagging issue is that some observers have suggested that when Tripp was finally shown to the media on February 17, on a Fox show, he looked unusually large for his purported age – but a January birth should have made him look smaller than expected. Maybe he was just a really big baby. Then again, maybe Tripp was born before December, as some smart people have argued. 

It's a puzzler.

The experiences of Jane Swift, who truly gave birth while serving as a governor, highlight how false Sarah Palin's birth claims are

The utter absurdity of Sarah Palin's claim to have given birth to Trig in April 2008 is highlighted by looking at what happened when a governor really gave birth while in office – that is, when Jane Swift of Massachusetts delivered twins on May 15, 2001.

A typical story about that birth, appearing at CNN, started this way:

Acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift Tuesday gave birth by C-section to healthy twin girls, hospital officials said.

"She's fine, she's doing well," said Dr. Leila Schueler, the governor's doctor.

OK, let's examine that. The first line quotes an official of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, presumably an employee of the hospital who prepared a press release and/or took press calls. How different this was from Palin's alleged birth, in which the hospital where she claims she gave birth, Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, absolutely refuses to say a word ... nada, zip ... about whether there was a birth, or even whether Palin was a patient.

The next line quotes Dr. Schueler saying the governor is "doing well." And who is Dr. Schueler? She was the BWH obstetrician/gynecologist who delivered the baby – in other words, a maternity specialist. Compare this to Palin's improbable claim that her personal physician, a family doctor, delivered Trig, a premature special-needs baby. 

The next day, CNN carried a followup story, which said in part:

The first born, Lauren, experienced some minor breathing problems and was taken to a special care nursery for observation.

"They expect her to be in there for about a day or so just for some observation," said Swift's spokesman, Jason Kauppi. 

So far as news reports show, Swift's twins had no disabilities or special needs. Still, as we see in the quote, the medical staff, wanting to make sure there were no problems, placed one of the twins in a special nursery for a day. And if there had been a problem, BWH is a teaching hospital with a top-rated neonatal ICU that could have handled virtually any emergency.

By contrast, Mat-Su Regional, a very small hospital, has no neonatal ICU. So it would have been bizarre for Palin to chose to give birth there. After all, Trig has Down syndrome, and Palin claimed she was delivering a month early; surely a concerned mother would want adequate facilities on hand to handle an emergency.

Moreover, Palin claimed she flew into Anchorage after her labor started, and then drove nearly an hour more to reach Mat-Su Regional. Why would she not save time and simply go Providence hospital in Anchorage, the largest and best-equipped hospital in Alaska? After all, her family doctor, who purportedly delivered Trig, has full privileges there.

The answer, of course, is Palin did not give birth that day. She claimed she gave birth at Mat-Su Regional because, as a former board member there, she was confident no one there would reveal she staged a hoax.

But back to Swift: three days after the birth, the hospital released a statement to the press containing the following:

A week after being admitted to BWH for contractions, Acting Governor Jane Swift underwent a Caesarean section to deliver twin girls Tuesday evening. 

During Swift’s five-day recovery at BWH, “she will do what most new mothers do—fawn over her children,” said spokesman Jason Kauppi to a crowd of reporters ...

So we see that Jane Swift was admitted to the hospital fully a week before the birth, and that afterward she would stay in the hospital for five more days. And how does that compare to the amazing Mrs. Palin? 

Sarah, you will recall, claimed her water broke more than 20 hours before she went to the hospital, and that after her contractions started, she boarded a plane and flew more than 3,000 miles from Texas to Alaska. (Doesn't she make Swift look like a wimp!) 

And how many days did Sarah allegedly spend in the hospital recuperating after the alleged birth? Er ... how many hours? Well, there is no real evidence she was there at all, but the official story has it that she left the hospital the same same day she gave birth. So, five days recuperation for Swift, and well under a day for Palin. 

I could go on. But I think the above makes my point. Palin's fake birth in no way resembled what we would expect if she, as governor, really gave birth while in office. The hospital where she allegedly delivered will not say a word about the birth; and her alleged time in and out of that hospital was implausibly short. Palin's farfetched claims seem consistent only with a hoax; they deviate enormously from what happened in the case of a governor, Jane Swift, who truly gave birth while in office.

An Illustrated Guide to the Sarah Palin Birth Hoax

For a printable 8.5 by 11 inch version of this poster, go here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/91438394/An-Illustrated-Guide-to-the-Sarah-Palin-Birth-Hoax

Here's what the 8.5 by 11 inch version looks like:

Print this out from the link above and post it everywhere.

Photo analysis suggests McCain team likely saved campaign by stuffing pillow in Bristol's (actually Meghan's) dress at RNC

After going back and forth on this matter, I now think it is likely that Tripp, the son of Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston, was born after the officially given date of Dec. 27, 2008. Or if he was born on that date, then maybe something usual happened – for example, perhaps the birth was induced early. Keep in mind that the media would not see Tripp for nearly seven weeks after the alleged date of birth.

The issue is important, of course, because the McCain team, at the Republican National Convention in early September 2008, used the claim that Bristol was five months pregnant to argue that she could not be Trig's mother, since Trig allegedly was born in April (an allegation for which there is no real proof).

Is there a key to the truth? I think so. Here is the photo of Bristol at the RNC:

Bristol obviously has padding in the bosom area. But what about the belly? For you Photoshop freaks, here's the picture after some extreme adjustments with the color-curves controls to help show details:

Wow! Did they really just strap a round pillow to her midsection? It sure looks like it. Note how that round shape presses against the dress in the middle of the stomach area, but then there seems to be a space to the side where the material is loose. I don't think real pregnant bellies take that shape. Nor do your better fake-pregnancy empathy bellies. 

Also, that baby bump seems to defy gravity by riding so high on her stomach. Here is the RNC picture, now lightened, shown next to an Oct. 14 video capture of Bristol from an MSNBC newscast:

Note how much lower the belly bump on the right, which presumably is genuine, seems to be. What I imagine happened is that the pillow (or whatever) was placed correctly to start out with, but all Bristol had to do was sit down once and the material would be forced upward. (That's also what probably happened to Sarah's padding on March 26 at the Alaska State Museum, where her "baby bump" seemed much too high.)

So this really was a last-minute amateur job of making Bristol look five-months pregnant. Meghan McCain revealed that the Palins confiscated one of her dresses – Meghan, who is voluptuous, would have filled out that dress naturally.

Supporting the idea that Bristol is padded in the bosom and belly in the photo above is this photo from August 24, less than two weeks earlier:

Let's enlarge the midsection of this photo and adjust color to show details:

Bristol seems to have something heavy in the pocket of her sweatshirt or jacket – I'm guessing it's a camera – and it's pulling the material straight down. But the garment at the low point is a few inches away from Bristol's pants, so I suppose there is enough room for, say, a three or three-and-a-half month baby bump to be obscured; perhaps that was the point of wearing that loose-fitting garment.

Of course, even if Bristol was four months pregnant as of the start of the RNC on Sept. 1, that would not absolutely rule her out as Trig's mother. She had to be presented as at least five months along. And that called for extra padding.

The fact that the Palins and McCains agreed to let Bristol wear Meghan's dress while padded to fill it out suggests some real last-minute scrambling just before the start of the RNC. The McCain team surely knew of the birth hoax rumors before they all gathered in Minneapolis, and I suspect they knew of the hoax itself. They did not know that the hoax story would burn across the Internet after ArcXIX, on August 28, accused Sarah at the Daily Kos site of faking the birth. And maybe they did not know about Bristol's second pregnancy till they all met in Minneapolis.

What I suspect is that the McCain team brilliantly improvised by dreaming up the five-months-pregnant Bristol gambit. And by doing so they perhaps saved the campaign from crashing and burning in early September. Instead, the campaign slowly came unravelled as they, and America, learned how frighteningly ill-equipped Sarah Palin would be to one day, in the event of McCain's death, serve as president.

Was John McCain pressured into naming Sarah Palin as his running mate? Trig's middle name may provide a clue. 

Audrey, the tireless sleuth and excellent writer who ran the invaluable Palin's Deceptions site, was convinced for months that the picture of Andrea Gusty interviewing Palin on April 13, 2008, five days before the alleged birth of Trig, had to be a fake. Here is that picture:

She was so convinced, in fact, that she hired a Photoshop expert to analyze the photo to see if it had been doctored. Then Gusty, probably after being prodded by a Palin surrogate, did a newscast in late January 2009 where she showed that the alleged interview indeed took place. And for me, at least, that settled the question: the photo had not been doctored.

But I know what logic drove Audrey. She found it just too darned convenient that the photo (and a second one, below), should happen to appear in late August 2008, at the exact moment they were needed to quell the rumors of a birth hoax. This second picture shows Palin with, from the left, Dan Carpenter, a cameraman for KTUU, and Bill McAllister, the chief political reporter for KTUU, who would soon become her press secretary:

These two photos were taken minutes apart. Gusty has said she shot the lower one and that Carpenter shot the top one. She never, however, explained why the photos were taken. And as I argue at length here (pages 11-13), the odds seem excellent that the interview was arranged precisely to get photos showing Palin with an extremely large belly, which was certainly a fake-maternity prosthetic.

And as I explained in the last post, those pictures were held in reserve until late August 2008, rather than being posted right away, because they showed Palin looking far more pregnant than she had at any previous time in her remarkable six-week pregnancy.

So, one point I want to make is that Audrey simply looked at the Gusty picture in the wrong way. She seemed to think that a pregnant-looking image of Palin had been superimposed onto an earlier photo. What she should have focused on was the peculiar setting. Palin had been positioned at a very specific spot for the interview – where one hallway terminated at another – which allowed the still cameraman to shoot her big belly in profile while the video cameraman shot her head-on (from the shoulders up).

In other words, the logistics of the setup should have let us know that picture was real – and raised an even more interesting question: Why had someone gone to so much trouble to arrange the Gusty interview and get the still pictures? Only two answers seem to make sense.

First, some person, be it Palin or McAllister or someone else, was so foresighted and cautious that they decided to stage the interview and get the still shots just in case Palin got picked in the fall. I doubt that was the case. That's just too much planning and effort for what should have seemed like a long-shot.

Which brings us to the other possibility: that the fix was in by the time that photo was taken for Palin to be the VP pick in the fall. I think that is the correct view: the fix was in. And that being true, the conspirators knew the hoax would hit the fan after McCain announced Palin as his pick – and therefore some big-belly Palin photos needed to be staged in the spring to smother the inevitable hoax rumors in the fall.

And the fact that the baby's full name is Trig Paxson Van Palin may contain important clues concerning the fix. The tale of how Palin came to be assured of the VP slot by that spring perhaps involves sex and political pressure.

Trig Paxson Van Palin: What's in a name?

Trig's two middle names can be taken to mean different things. Let's start with "Van." Odd as it may sound, Palin has suggested Van Halen, the rock band, inspired that name – Trig would have the similar sounding "Van Palin" as the last half of his name. The following announcement of Trig's birth in fact contains a picture made to look like an album cover, plus over Trig's head, a "VP" symbol similar to the VH logo used by the rock band.

And why did Palin give Trig the other middle name, "Paxson"? She has said he's named after a popular snowmobiling area in Alaska called Paxson. Is it just a coincidence that VP can also mean vice president? Since she was actively being touted as a VP prospect at the time, that would be hard to believe. And if not a coincidence – if that VP graphic deliberately suggested the political office – shouldn't we likewise expect the name Paxson to contain a hidden meaning?

*     *     *    

In early 2008, someone tipped off the New York Times that John McCain, whose brand rested on being a political reformer, may have essentially traded his political clout for sex in 2000. It was an accusation that could have sunk his campaign.

On Feb. 21, less than two weeks before Super Tuesday, when McCain hoped to clinch the nomination, a Times story about the alleged affair appeared, starting thus:

"WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

"A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity."

This was a bombshell, and it had all the marks of a setup. Somebody with tremendous power or wealth must have targeted McCain. Only such an individual, using money or other lures, could have induced McCain's former staffers to betray him in this way to the Times.

And who could this powerful person be? A tipoff might be the story's revelation that the female lobbyist had flown with McCain "on a client's corporate jet." That client was Lowell "Bud" Paxson, the media mogul who made much of his great fortune by co-founding and then selling the Home Shopping Network. And the lobbyist was the beautiful Vicki Iseman, a partner at the high-powered PR firm Alcalde & Fay. Some have said Iseman (below, left), who is more than 30 years McCain's junior, bears a striking resemblance to Cindy McCain (right), John's wife.

If Paxson in fact induced McCain's former aides to spill to the Times, what was he after? Paxson, it should be noted, is an evangelical Christian, and his commitment to his faith is so great that in the 1990s he founded Pax-TV, an entire network devoted to uplifting programming infused with Christian principles. He sold that network several years ago – it's been renamed Ion Television – but it still stands as a testament to his faith.

What indeed could McCain give to Paxson? Let me caution that what follows is speculation on my part; the only evidence is circumstantial. But the circumstances suggest McCain might have agreed to put an evangelical Christian on the ticket: Sarah Palin. 

Iseman denied to the Times that there had been an affair. But I'm guessing that if – and that's a big if – McCain and Iseman got amorous while flying around on Paxson's jet, Paxson might have had even more damning beans to spill the Times. (Did airplane personnel happen to see something romantic?) To be blunt: Paxson could have applied pressure to McCain to accept Palin as his running mate – and even if nothing explicit was said between them, if McCain knew that Paxson knew about shenanigans, that might have given Paxson's urgings great weight.

*     *     *    

Does the scenario I paint above seem plausible? Would Palin have actually given Trig a middle name that paid tribute to a man who helped her secure a spot on the GOP ticket? Would she have given him a second middle name that allowed her to enjoy a private joke that involved putting "VP" above Trig's head on a birth announcement, perhaps as a way of saying, "This Down syndrome baby will help me win the vice presidency"?

Only a very disturbed woman would do such a thing – a woman who might name a baby after a disability, such as Tri-G.

____________

Postscript: 

As a matter of basic fairness, I wish to stress that concerning Lowell Paxton and John McClain, I have no information other than what I reference above, plus obvious Internet sources like Wikipedia. In other words, I have no reason – apart from the weird circumstances I outline – to think Paxton might have pressured McCain in 2008. So what I present above is a hypothesis that may be proved wrong. I'll gladly publish a rebuttal from any of the parties mentioned in the story. I used the word "blackmail" in an earlier headline for this post; after consideration, I find the word "pressure" preferable. Blackmail may be considered illegal, but not pressure. I don't wish to suggest possiblly illegal actions by the above parties, even in a speculatice way.

In the same vein, let me present what the New York Times has appended to the end of its story that I link to above:

A Note to Readers: February 20, 2009
An article published on February 21, 2008, about Senator John McCain and his record as an ethics reformer who was at times blind to potential conflicts of interest included references to Vicki Iseman, a Washington lobbyist. The article did not state, and The Times did not intend to conclude, that Ms. Iseman had engaged in a romantic affair with Senator McCain or an unethical relationship on behalf of her clients in breach of the public trust.

UPDATED: Anatomy of a birth hoax: Palin's transition from flat belly to beach ball roundness in just six weeks in 2008

Sarah Palin's public pregnancy lasted only about six weeks, from the time she announced it on March 5, 2008, to the alleged birth on April 18. And thus she faced quite a problem: how to "grow" a baby bump in such a short time without seeming to defy the laws of physics and human anatomy. The following overview shows just how crafty she was in solving that problem.

On March 3, Newsweek interviewed Palin. The videos for the interview show that for at least 10 minutes Palin held the pose we see in this screen shot:

Two days later she would announce she was seven months pregnant. Of course, a woman that far along would not be able to assume that cross-legged, bent-over position for even one minute, let alone 10. But I believe the photo reveals that Palin had by this time made her decision to go forward with the hoax. By bending over like that, with her scarf hanging down, she was able to obscure the view of her belly – a logical objective if she had not yet started to wear padding. (One has to wonder what the Newsweek interviewer thought when told later of Palin's claim.)

When Palin declared she was seven months pregnant on March 5, Wesley Loy of the Anchorage Daily News wrote, "The governor ... simply doesn't look pregnant." I have not seen a picture from that day, but we can assume Palin wore very little, if any, padding. Her strategy at first seemed to consist of wearing a somewhat oversized dark suit jacket with a large flouncy scarf in front.

That certainly seemed to be the case for this Associated Press photo from March 14:

Look closely at Palin's jacket and note how large and long it is. Unfortunately for her, she left the jacket unbuttoned, which meant the camera caught her flat belly – so flat, in fact, that this picture alone constitutes irrefutable proof there was a hoax. But even if the jacket had been closed, she still would not have looked seven months pregnant. Consider the following picture, shot on March 28:

This is the photo the Anchorage Daily News ran as evidence that Palin had to be pregnant along with Julia O'Malley's embarrassing "Make.It.Stop" story of last April 14, which was a pro-Palin response to a paper I had published about the hoax. The jacket is huge, with pronounced shoulder pads; and by wearing it Palin was able to make herself look quite large – but not convincingly pregnant. Women who are close to giving birth have an arch in their back because of the weight of the stomach – but Palin is standing perfectly straight, and no baby bump is evident. She looks like a linebacker, but not a pregnant one. And this was the most convincing photo the newspaper could come up with!

Then, of course, there are the photos from the Alaska State Museum on March 26. Here's one of the most revealing:

Now here is a blowup of Palin's midsection, lightened and with extra sharpening:

The detail is wonderful. She's wearing a black pullover that's clinging to something underneath, and that something looks very much like a lumbar-support belt – although it looks like it has ridden higher than she would want. Here is an example of such a belt:

There are many such belts on the market, but I'm struck by how much this one that I found on eBay resembles what she seems to have on under her shirt.

There very definitely seems to be a "baby bump" under the belt – most likely consisting of foam rubber – but unfortunately for Palin it had ridden too high during the course of the day, and she almost seems to be carrying the supposed baby in her rib cage. And of course that baby bump is nowhere near large enough for someone just 19 days from giving birth. 

And finally here is the famous shot of KTVA's Andrea Gusty interviewing Palin on April 13:

And here is Palin from the Gusty photo, juxtaposed next to the museum shot:

So now, five days before the alleged blessed event, we see Palin almost certainly wearing a maternity empathy belly. We know she's using some sort of prosthetic because it would be physiologically impossible for a fetus to grow that fast, from the flatness we see in the March 14 photo to the roundness on April 13. To the left below is a fake-maternity belly available on eBay, and to the right I superimpose it over Palin's large belly to show how such a prosthetic could have been used:

A newcomer to this issue might say, "Wait a second – wouldn't the the hoax have been obvious to anyone who saw big-belly Sarah, if they had also seen her so much thinner just days before?" The answer surely is yes, but here's where the trickery comes in: very few in Alaska got to see Palin wearing that big-belly maternity prosthetic.

To minimize the number who saw Palin in that getup, everything relating to the Gusty interview had to be tightly controlled. The interview, which was broadcast live, took place on a Sunday evening, after the legislature had finished its session, thus ensuring that the statehouse would be largely empty. In fact, the entire purpose of the interview certainly was to get still shots from the side showing Palin's large belly in profile. Note how carefully Palin was positioned where one hallway ends at another, meaning she could be shot head on by the video cameraman, but from the side by the still camera. The video cameraman shot Palin from the shoulders up, so the large belly was not in evidence in the newscast.

The Gusty interview was a brilliant ploy. The still shots from it, linked as they were to a newscast that aired the week before the alleged birth, constituted absolute proof that Palin looked very pregnant on April 13. And those still shots could be held in reserve, to be produced later if needed to snuff out hoax questions. And, of course, that is exactly how they were used in the fall. (I explore who the other players were in the staging of the Gusty interview here, on pages 11-13. It is likely that only three people witnessed the interview: the video cameraman, the still cameraman, and Bill McAllister, her soon-to-be-named new press secretary.) 

Because only a few people saw Palin in the big-belly prosthetic, it is not surprising that when Lisa Demer of the Anchorage Daily News put together the newspaper's story about the alleged birth, she wrote that "Palin never got big" during her pregnancy with Trig, which the Gusty photo would contradict. Demer clearly never saw Palin wearing the prosthetic. 

Palin also wore the empathy belly when giving her speech in Dallas on April 17, as press photos reveal. But those photos were shot from a distance, with Palin facing the camera, so the extra-large size of her belly was not so apparent. I imagine Todd and Sarah shooed away any photographer who tried to get a closeup.

It should be noted that when Palin was truly pregnant in the past, she did indeed get as large as a normal woman would, as shown by this picture of a much younger Palin (the woman wearing the red shirt) in one of her first pregnancies:

Thus Palin was able to pull off the hoax during her six-week pregnancy by wearing clothing that disguised how slender she truly was, by using padding, and by pretending that she did not get very big during the pregnancy. On page 191 of Going Rogue, Palin writes: “Before we knew it, I was seven months along. I hadn’t put on a lot of weight and with winter clothes and a few cleverly draped scarves, no one saw my girth or suspected I was pregnant.” The idea that Palin, a 44-year-old mother of four, could have been pregnant for seven months without putting on much weight is an obvious whopper. 

But Palin managed to have her cake and eat it too. In addition to claiming she did not gain much weight during her pregnancy, to explain her small or nonexistent baby bump through most of the six-week pregnancy, she also managed to get pictures of herself looking roundly pregnant by wearing an empathy belly in staged shots with Gusty. And those shots, when posted to Flickr anonymously in September, may have saved her spot on the ticket as John McCain's running mate by snuffing out rumors about the hoax.