Bristol Palin: Mommy Dimmest.

The 6/1/09 issue of People Magazine features a young, smiling woman on the cover. She's wearing a cap and gown and holding a baby. She could be a proud mother graduating from college, but the headline calls her a teen mom. The father is absent because as the headline also tells us, she's Bristol Palin, the famously unwed daughter of Sarah Palin, a former Vice-Presidential candidate. Why is she preening, bastard in hand, on the cover of People and what on earth can she be smiling about? The caption should explain, but it only raises more questions.

The caption quotes Bristol Palin as saying, "If girls realized the consequences of sex, nobody would be having sex. Trust me. Nobody." Apparently, until nine months ago, she was unaware that sex could result in pregnancy and, until this day, is unaware that it doesn't have to. What's more, the idea that the consequences of sex (including sexually transmitted diseases) needn't be permanent - or life threatening - seems alien to her. Why does the average ghetto teenager know more about the subject than the Governor of Alaska's daughter? It can't be an accident - and it didn't happen overnight. Even in nature, it takes water a thousand years to produce a gap that big.

When it comes to intellect, Sarah Palin is not a force of nature. In a memorable interview with Katy Couric, she claimed foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from her window. You don't, however, have to be a genius to teach your child "the facts of life." You don't have to be a Supreme Court Justice, either, to teach them good judgment. Instead, it appears that the only thing Sarah Palin has passed on to her daughter is her looks. A not inconsiderable gift, I'll grant you, but without even a rudimentary form of guidance, that's like handing your car keys to a six-year-old. What about the men in Bristol's life? Don't they share responsibility? Her father, Todd Palin, and the father of her child, Levi Johnston, are not public figures, so they're harder to judge. Yet, from what I can tell, it's very tempting to underestimate them and very likely impossible. Still, the questions remain: what legitimate reason is there for her to pose with her illegitimate child on the cover of a national magazine and why is she beaming?

Qui bono? Who benefits? Certainly not Bristol Palin. Public exposure, under the circumstances, is public humiliation of a Puritan intensity. She may as well be in the stocks or, in the Nathaniel Hawthorne mode, wear a scarlet letter on her chest: A for adultery. Her mother, however, is a politician as well as governor. Perhaps her quixotic run for the Vice-Presidency stoked her national ambitions instead of dampening them. Could she be trying to put a good spin on her daughter's escapades by presenting Bristol's life as a cautionary tale? Thus, keeping her own name before the public and turning a political liability into an advantage - or is that too cold, too calculating, too Manchurian Candidate-ish to consider? If it's true, then Bristol is smiling because she has no other choice. And the person who should be wearing the scarlet letter is her mother: A for . . . amoral?