Paying unwed teen mother Bristol Palin $262,500/year for promoting abstinence is like paying Jared Loughner to put on gun safety workshops.
It’s like paying John Boehner to teach you how to use cosmetics to look sun-kissed and natural.
It’s like paying John Hinckley Jr. to teach you how to appropriately express your love for Jodie Foster.
The web is abuzz with the news that Palin, who became a teen abstinence ambassador for the Candie's Foundation in 2009, was paid $262,500 for her “work.” (I’m not sure how a girl who gave birth to a seven-pound, seven-ounce baby boy at 5:30 a.m. on December 29, 2008 is qualified to promote abstinence.)
Thinkprogress.org examined the foundation’s 2009 tax form and found that the group spent $165,000 on advertising and disbursed only $35,000 in grants. It paid Bristol over seven times what it paid to actual teen pregnancy prevention groups and counseling clinics.
With that kind of money you could finance more than six preschool teachers in Flint, Michigan for a year and have money left over for crayons and coloring books.
You could buy five Jaguar XF mid-sized luxury cars and still have thousands of dollars left for gas.
You could stay in a five-star hotel for 2,187 nights as long as you didn’t go all Charlie Sheen on the place.
The official death toll in Japan has been raised to 12,341 and more than 15,000 people are missing. I bet the American Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders or the International Medicine Corps would love to get their hands on more than a quarter of a million dollars.
Apparently, Bristol’s “exploring a variety of options to cash in on the visibility provided by her successful, but not victorious, run on ABC’s hit show, ‘Dancing with the Stars.’” Sources have also reported Bristol saying she will “probably” run for office sometime “further down the road.” She reportedly said, “If I saw something that needed to be changed, then I would step up to the plate and do something about it.”
I would suggest she work to change how people idolize the greedy, nonsensical, selfish, embarrassing, shameless Palins and Kardashians and Hiltons and Lohans of America who contribute nothing to the world but – with the help of a cynical and lazy media – amass wealth and fame while reducing our standards of what’s acceptable and decent and artistic. They are not artists. They’re vultures and vampires and warpers of children’s minds. Do something to change that, willya, BP?
I heard that Mommy Sarah’s book publisher is putting out Bristol’s as-yet-untitled memoir this summer. (Why anyone would be interested in the barely-formed memories of a not-even-old-enough-to-drink daughter of a stupid former governor is beyond me. I’d rather peruse the phone book.) At more than 300 pages, the book is expected to sell for $17.
I’ll pay her twice that – in cash – if she’ll just shut up and go away.
Hey, in this economy $34 is nothing to sneeze at.
Sources: RedAlertlive.com, thinkprogress.org, New York Times
As a single mother of 2 children not born out of wedlock that would take me 8 years to make that kind of money!
ReplyDeleteNice work if you can get it.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Candie's Foundation website, their mandate is not to provide grants, but to raise awareness of abstinence. They are not the first non-profit to pay top dollar to high profile spokespeople. I do think the people funding/donating to the foundation may think twice.
I was appalled that someone of such little qualifications would be a spokesperson. I am quite sure that she has no concept of the hardship of single parenthood even though the babydaddy is a fame seeking dud.