In her book, Sarah jokes about having had contractions during her infamous ‘my Down Syndrome son isn’t due for a month and my water broke but I don’t need to go to a hospital’ speech in Texas. And yet here’s an excerpt from her press interview given to the ADN (Anchorage Daily News) just 4 days after the alleged birth of Trig Paxson Van Palin:

FAMILY FEELS BLESSED: Back at work already, governor says she wasn’t in labor in Texas. By LISA DEMER ldemer@adn.com Published: April 22nd, 2008 01:11 AM Last Modified: October 20th, 2008 02:15 PM

“I am not a glutton for pain and punishment. I would have never wanted to travel had I been fully engaged in labor,” Palin said. After four kids, the governor said, she knew what labor felt like, and she wasn’t in labor.

The full ADN article is archived here.

So which is it? And how, after delivering four other babies, could she not know that the slightest twinge of labour (false or not) can become fully engaged labour without notice or provocation?

And why didn’t her ghost-writer know to check the local news archives so Sarah’s book would reflect versions of events already in print or on tape? Had the writer never researched a book prior to ghost-writing this one? Would Harper Collins have sent a green ghost-writer to handle such an ambitious, potentially lucrative endeavour? Would they not have wanted to protect their investment with a proper writer? The idea that all the discrepancies in Sarah’s book can be attributed to an inexperienced ghost-writer seems a bit too convenient to me. And fishy too, also.

But put all that aside because we have other discrepancies upon which to focus today. Below is a photo of Trig, a premature baby of almost 5 weeks, at a reported birthweight of 6 lbs 2 oz, being held by his grandmother, in the hospital corridor, just hours after he was allegedly born:

And here is a photo of Trig on Mercede’s lap, in Sarah’s dining room, at least 1 – 7 days after said birth:

Did you get that? Ok look at it another way. BabyTrig, home from the hospital beside my friend with her ‘just born’ bub, Missimoo.

The two babies pictured above are meant to be only 1/4 pound different in weight. Four ounces. 113 grams. That difference is equal to 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 stick of butter (US) or a 1/4 pound Big Mac (without the bun and lettuce).

Look again at the photos of Trig, one allegedly taken only a few hours after his birth, and the other on or just after his homecoming (which was reported to have been the day after his birth):

Now do you get it? The bub Trig in Mercede’s lap is noticeably smaller than the newborn Trig in grandma’s arms, and yet that photo was taken at least one day after Trig’s birth. The photos could not have been mislabelled or taken in any other order because the photos of grandma showing off her ‘hours’ old grandson’ is well documented by newspaper and television crews. Obviously, then, the aunt Mercede holding baby Trig while seated in one of Sarah’s dining room chairs photo, had to have been taken after the hospital hallway photo, after mum and bub have gone home from the hospital.

And yet the two bubs in the photos of Trig don’t appear to be the same age or weight.

Head – meet desk!

For the record, I hadn’t really paid attention to any of these photos when they were first shown a year ago. But some time after Missimoo was born, and I was looking through her hospital photos, the penny dropped. Look how Trig fits in the crook of Mercede’s arm. She needs only one arm to support him and only the one hand to secure his bum and his classic premie-baby, fetal-positioned legs. That was my epiphany. That’s exactly how my 4 lb 4 oz premie son looked and fit in the crook of my arm until he was about 5 lbs (around 4 weeks old). Missimoo, on the other hand, spills over her dad’s arms (see next) and her brother needs both of his arms to balance his sister (see summary). Plus, when you look at the photos side by side, the bub in Mercede’s lap has the look of a premature infant while the bub in grandma’s arms, with his well-rounded face, clearly does not.

This is a 6 lb+ newborn baby:

This is not:

The only logical explanation is that Trig was actually born several weeks prior to his public debut and that the MySpace photos (mysteriously wiped from the internet during the 2008 Presidential campaign) more accurately depict his real homecoming. Sarah’s wild McRide across the US was an amateurish exercise in misdirection, deliberately executed to establish her pregnancy as fact and garner credibility and favour with the media.

The photo-op pictorial of Sarah’s parents holding their newborn grandson in the hospital corridor the next day is as McPhoney as McSarah’s new McCheekbones. But it does establish her parents as willing cohorts in her scheme to separate the American McPeople from their McCash.

And for me, here’s the icing on the cake – if it turns out that baby Trig was born not on April 18, but in February or March, my (and a lot of others) original observation that Bristol and Levi, as two teenagers brought up under the misguided banner of abstinence only, erroneously thought they had a window of opportunity to safely engage in unprotected sex following Trig’s birth, thus resulting in Bristol’s falling pregnant a second time, fits surprisingly neatly into the timeline of a second son, Tripp, being born in December.

I cannot possibly know which of the Babygate theories is true, if any of them are true, but I can tell you that my eyes are not so old I can’t tell the difference between the premie look of the bub in the photos gleaned from Mercede’s MySpace, taken in Sarah’s home, and the more matured weight and look of the bub displayed in grandma’s arms, allegedly taken no less than the day before the dining room photos and purportedly only a few hours after his birth for the benefit of news crew cameras.

If (after you’ve stopped banging your head on your desk) you’d like to explore this subject further, there are more opinions, theories and photos on several blogs dedicated to exposing the truth behind politicians in general and Sarah Palin specifically at the following links. Some of my photos were pinched from news archives and these sites:

Hypocrites & Heffalump Traps (What a premie baby looks like)

Hypocrites & Heffalump Traps (Levi, Special Olympics & Trig

Palingates (Babygate)

Bree Palin (Trig the day he was born)

Palin’s Deceptions (Mercedes Johnston MySpace Page)

Phil Walczak/KTUU-TV (Journo allowed to film a documentary of Sarah prior to Trig’s birth and before she announced her pregnancy to the public)

In summary:

When I look at these all together in a group, an old Sesame Street song pops into my head. And thanks to youtube, here it is 🙂

To comment on this post please scroll back to the title “The four Ounce Gambol (McPhoney McPhotos) nd click the word comments directly beneath – Thanks, OzMud