Sarah Palin is probably like most people, she’d rather her medical records remain confidential. Most of us resist even the indignity of taking a drug test to qualify for a job. But executive level positions require the insurance of a bill of health, clean or not. Unfortunately for Sarah, the employers making the hiring decision for the Executive Branch are We the People.

I do hope there’s an Executive Privilege to invoke which can protect the details of some categories. If FDR could keep his wheelchair a secret, I don’t mind not knowing about mental health lapses, STDs, or conditions Palin had to invent to score antibiotics for a spouse’s infection. Sarah may not seem bright, or educated, but TV viewers can all attest she doesn’t lack sanity or stamina. I doubt a psychiatrist would consider her behavior to be in any way aberrant for a public figure.

What probably really chafes Sarah is that fewer of her viewers seem concerned for her health, than are eager to check out her strange pregnancy story. Ordinarily, I’d think reproductive health histories should be the last to merit scrutiny, but what if the details in question concern a politician who wants to make it her business to regulate the reproductive rights of others?

Should a daughter’s right to privacy supersede a policy maker’s family-values facade? If a politician wants to laud high fructose corn syrup as part of a child’s healthy diet, I’d like them to acknowledge if their children are obese. Don’t preach the practicality of abstinence if your children are reproducing out of bounds. Maybe your clan can afford unwanted pregnancies, at least admit it.

I don’t have a problem with Jamie Lynn Spears’ second teen pregnancy, she has the financial resources to have oodles of babies. Of what quality, I can’t judge. But I’m not much in favor of Disney holding her up as an example for teenagers who aren’t buffered from minimum wage jobs and no daycare.

More mothers than we could probably guess have raised a grandchild as their own, to save face for a daughter’s premarital accident. Nothing untoward about secret keeping, it’s just tragic that women are forced to hide. Perhaps we should wish that society be more accepting. Would Sarah Palin’s fundamentalism be taking us in that direction?

Sarah Palin’s reproductive dogma would be hypocritical if it turns out that her fifth baby Trig was in reality her daughter Bristol’s. Why do we presume to judge unless we know for sure? Why does Palin refuse to release her health records? She’s told the media she will, but November 4th approaches…

It’s reported the Trig pregnancy went undetected by Sarah’s staff, while by coincidence, over the same period 16-year-old Bristol was kept out of school on account of “mono.” Sarah was on a business trip in Texas when she says her water broke. She boarded the plane to Alaska, still without anyone knowing about her condition, and gave birth later that evening. Who really cares if it happened that way or not, except that Palin is an outspoken puritan.

Who cares if Senator Larry Craig solicits illicit sex in public bathroom stalls? Except he’s a leading demagogue against gay equal rights.

And their denials would make them liars. Since when do we tolerate duplicity from public officials?

There’s a chance Sarah Palin has complicated her story with the public announcement of daughter Bristol’s unplanned pregnancy and intention to wed her unwitting teenage partner. It would appear this revelation was made primarily to deflect suspicions about which of them gave birth to the April baby. Sarah’s argument is that Bristol couldn’t be five months pregnant now if Bristol had been Trig’s real mother. Except the public will have little way to know how far along Bristol really is or was, if at all. Until well after the election.

All those facts will be very easy to contain after the election.

The American public needn’t know Bristol Palin’s private life. But we have every obligation to discover if Sarah Palin is the straight shooter she pretends.