Juno Director Says: Don't Judge the Palins
Mac MacGuff: And this, of course, is Juno.
Mark Loring: Like the city in Alaska?
Juno MacGuff: No.
-- from Juno, directed by Jason Reitman
Honest to Blog. What were the odds that commie-lefty-Obama-loving Hollywood would create the real-life template for the shenanigans playing out at the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota?
We're talking about the Sarah Palin drama about to come whirling down into the Xcel Energy Center like some hurricane blown up from the south. Except that this hurricane is coming down from the north, west of Juneau, Alaska, led by a former beauty queen turned schoolmarm politician-turned-vortex of hot molten media interest.
Juneau, Juno, what were the odds? It sure seems as if life will be imitating art today, as Palin brings her MacGuff-like clan -- teenaged pregnant daughter, Bristol, and the teenaged father of the baby, Levi Johnston. Rise, evangelical base, and hail their choice to keep the baby.
This sounds way too familiar. So I called my friend Jason Reitman, the director of "Juno" to ask him. " You'll recall that this tiny film that was not about teenaged pregnancy even while being about teenaged pregnancy somehow grossed over $100 million, and became Oscar nominee for Best Picture.
Reitman, first of all, is Canadian and not voting. Regardless, any similarities between Juno and Juneau are, he insists, pure coincidence. "Twenty-four hours into this story, there's no real way to tell whether life is imitating art or not," he said from his home in Los Angeles. "You've got a 17-year-old pregnant teenager, and Juneau is the capital of Alaska. The coincidence is cute."
But, he insisted, his movie tried hard not to make a political statement. "Juno is not about pregnancy," he said. "It's a location. I do not want to tell people what to think. They have to come up with their own conclusion. Just don't judge." (Isn't that its own kind of conclusion?)
Reitman insists he has no political point of view on any of this. Who's business is Palin's daughter's pregnancy anyway?
Juno is not about choosing to keep a baby or not, he said: "It's just about a teenaged girl who grows up too fast, and a 30-year-old man who won't grow up." Then the director went to put his toddler daughter to bed.
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Juno Director Says: Don't Judge the Palins?
Of course he would say that. Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody 'invented' the 'Palins'!
What a great idea! "The Palins" on FOX. What a concept. Just picture it - sort of a cross between Northern Exposure, The Simpsons, and Hee Haw.
At least an SNL skit starring, of course, Tina Fey.
Pure genius.
who is going to judge Sarah Palin's daughter for being a single mom.
Google the unwed mother birth rates in the US.
71% of african american births
50% of hispanic american births
35% of the caucasian american births
15% of asian-american births
were to unwed mothers!!
With a nation full of (and increasing) illegitimate children, i doubt these same people are anyhow qualified to judge bristol palin!!
"...commie-lefty-Obama-loving Hollywood..."??? Wow, it's obvious you've got a drum to beat.
As someone else has already pointed out on another blog on Huffpost, Palin is the one that brought up her kids. She's making a big deal out of being a hockey-mom, out of being the mother of a special needs child, out of being the mother of 5 or 6 or whatever.
Palin is running for the 2nd highest office in the Nation, she's not being interviewed for a position as barista at the local coffee shop. Tougher questions will be asked and should be answered. Greater scrutiny will be given and should be given to the way this person runs her life because it does have a direct bearing on whether or not people will want to cast their vote for her. And she's just going to have to deal with questions about her family, especially her unwed, pregnant, teenaged daughter.
Did she really think that everyone was going to tiptoe around her just because she's a female? Ha! She should have paid closer attention to Hillary's campaign.
Not only must Palin be judged, but the entire corporate political machine must be judged, convicted and sentenced.
Don't judge Sarah...certainly don't judge her daughter, just annihilate her politically in the next 60 some odd days.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about Bristol Palin and her husband-to-be Levi Johnston. I don't judge or condemn Bristol or Levi at all - I made my share of mistakes when I was young. But I have a harsh judgment of Gov. Palin. She - with the apparent complicity of Levi's mother - is helping to deprive both of these young people the opportunity to do what she herself was able to do: go to college.
It was absolutely within Bristol's right to privacy about her own body to choose against having an abortion. But in the best interests of everyone, Bristol's baby should be given up for adoption, instead of Bristol's and Levi's being forced into a shotgun marriage that is destined to end in divorce a few years down the road. An open adoption would allow the Palin and Johnston families to keep tabs on the baby while giving Bristol and Levi the chances they need to grow up at a SOMEWHAT normal rate. An open adoption would allow a childless couple to get the baby they have longed and prayed and hoped for. An open adoption would be THE most "pro-life" thing that could happen: Better lives for Bristol and Levi, a better life for their child, and better lives for the childless couple who would cherish their child beyond measure.
To be continued ...
The comments in this post put me in mind of Dan Quayle, who also thought he was being deep when he used a fictional character (Murphy Brown) to make a real-life point about out-of-wedlock motherhood
In this case, the fictional character played so delightfully by Ellen Page doesn't even provide an apples-to-apples comparison to Bristol Palin. Juno, as you may recall, was given a *choice* not to marry her baby's father, but to allow the child to be adopted by an adult. That choice evaporated for Bristol the moment her mother became the poster girl for John McCain's appeal to the born-again Republican base.
You are mistaken.
"Born-again Repulican base" folks are delighted for all the "girls" that choose adoption!!!
Adoptions stop the death of the children - so it is supported by every "born-again Republican" I know!!!
The rally against abortion - they will praise adoption every time!!!!
It's not the underage sex and unplanned pregnancy, it's the HYPOCRISY people
No one is judging Bristol, really. At least, not I. But I DO think it's important to bring up the hypocrisy of the good "Christian folk" that preach about abstinence and waiting until marriage.
Also, it worries me deeply that Bristol had, and made, a CHOICE as to what she wanted to do. If Palin were to become President (should something bad happen to McCain), I wouldn't put it past her to essentially take away from other teen girls what Bristol had: a choice.
How does a conservative Christian family handle the 'sleep over" in Minneapolis given the circumstances.? Pretend they're too young for sex , seperate rooms, or just figure no use closing the barn door after the horse is gone. The horse, ,the chickens and all the cows...
Now if she'd only had an abstinence ring ... none of this would have happened.
Actually, 'Juno' had one very clear message, stated repeatedly by the character of Juno: Giving away a baby and not looking back is easy and possible.
In fact, babies put up for adoption always feel the tearing away from the mother, feel deeply moved when someone can say to them, "I am sorry you lost your mother". Women or girls who give up their babies always wonder about them and do not 'never look back'. Often they get in touch with them later, much later -- and both finally feel complete. Often they weren't cut out to be mothers at the time or were too young and knew it. It is not easy, as 'Juno' claims.
Newsflash: This is still not about her daughter's pregnancy. This is about lying by omission, instead of stating up front her daughter is pregnant. McCain is complicit if he knew, incompetent if he didn't. Deception got us into a war for money and oil. Do we want another four years of The Same?
Palin's not courageous, not unique and has stretched her resume way too thin. If you were interviewing a candidate for a major job, you asked her a question about her past experiences, already knowing the answer and she doesn't tell you the complete truth. What do you do? Would you hire her?
LOL ...Funny you should mention it, since I just watched that movie for the first time last month. (and it's become one of my favorites!)
I love it when life imitates art. Because the reality is sure to be even more hilariously bizarre than the fiction. (As the man said, fiction has got to make actual sense!)
This whole Palin family episode is a case in point - my mom would call this sort of thing a dog-and-pony show.
(And kudos to Jason Reitman for staying above the fray and staying focused on his own girl ... that's the most good sense anyone has yet displayed the past week.)
See Tracy Saunders's Profile
Hi,
Sharon, Thank you for your post. I loved Juno.
The McCain campaign released the Bristol Palin's pregnancy information to the press so of course the media is going to dig in. I am still unclear though why the campaign chose to release the information in the first place.
I don't condone judging a young teenage mom (my sister also became pregnant at 17 and I am thrilled she kept her daughter - my lovely niece).
But when Governor Palin first introduced herself to the country, she introduced her family as an extension of herself as a testament to her life accomplishments. The American public wants to know everything about every her and her family, especially since she arrived so late in the game and was, until a day or so ago, relatively unknown to most Americans. Every other candidate is under similarly intense media scrutiny. Perhaps they just have more leverage to protect themselves from it.
http://beyondthepretty.wordpress.com/
The Palin pregnancy isn't important because we're entitled to every scrap of dirt on a candidate. It's important because of the hypocrisy of a woman whose party's rallying cry is fear of sex and condemnation of those who enjoy sex - a woman who is strongly identified with ultra-conservative christianity, which is based first and foremost on fear of sex.
When other peoples' kids get pregnant it's blamed on TV and video games and Hollywood lib'rals and gays. When their own kids get pregnant it's god giving them the chance to be virtuous and say no to abortion. Teenage pregnancy, elevated to sacrament thanks to powerful parents and a careless vetting process.
How is this myth that Democrats and/or progressives are "judging" the Palin family regarding the out of wedlock pregnancy of the 17 year old daughter coming about? Who has started this when in fact I have heard or read absolutely nothing from those quarters who have been critical of anything having to do with this situation.
The criticism that has been lodged has to to with the hypocrisy of the Republican party and the McCain campaign for announcing this, in violation of the young lady's privacy, and the fact that they incessantly try to force their own morality on all the rest of us.
That is what is going on, and this myth is false.
Try reading Sally Quinn's latest column!
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