This week I had a new resolution: to seriously limit the time I waste reading celebrity gossip sites. I decided I could still check DListed and TMZ, but no other sites and no reader comments. And I actually did okay at first–most of this stuff is non-news anyway. I mean, we all KNOW Mel Gibson is a racist, sexist, abusive a**hole. We know Lindsay Lohan is a whining, entitled brat who won’t face up to her own addictions, and her mommy’s photo appears in the dictionary under “enabler.” Jesse James still wants to take Sunny to Austin, and Janine still won’t let him. And Jessica Simpson is busy straddling her man of the hour mere feet from her creepy father. Nothing new in any of this.

But then Bristol Palin had to go and get engaged to baby daddy Levi Johnston and trumpet it on the cover of Us Weekly yesterday. Oh, and not tell the parents on either side. D-ra-ma!

Now, I’m really not that interested in any politician’s kids. I think, as Barack Obama said during the campaign, kids should be off-limits. So I haven’t been following the Bristol-Levi saga, except that I knew there’d been a nasty breakup and each side was saying bad things about the other in the media. Until yesterday, I didn’t know he’d posed for Playgirl, and I had no idea they’d reconciled. But after reading the blurb about the US Weekly story–secret engagement, parents don’t know–I had to see what other people were saying about this news, so I scrolled through some of the comments on DListed.

Which led me to the blog of Levi’s sister, Mercede. It’s not scandalous but it is interesting, particularly in light of some of the other Palin speculation and gossip I subsequently found swirling around the Internet.
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Several months ago, I saw Bristol talking about abstinence on Oprah. And I thought Oprah was extremely, unwarrantedly harsh. She seemed to completely disbelieve that someone who’d had sex could turn around and vow to remain celibate until marriage. She kept trying to hammer home to Bristol what a huge public humiliation it would be when, not if, Bristol failed at that resolution, and how every guy she met would be trying to get her into bed just to embarrass her.

I thought Oprah was being unfair. I mean, here’s a girl who had sex and ended up an unwed teenage mother. She knows the consequences. She has all kinds of good reasons not to do it again, and besides, maybe the sex wasn’t even that great in the first place. I’ve known people who have been sexually active, later decided to remain celibate until marriage, and succeeded. I know people who waited to have sex with anyone until marriage and succeeded. And as far as I know, none of them regretted waiting. So who is Oprah to question the sexual choices and determination of Bristol Palin or, for that matter, any other adult whose sexual choices don’t entail nonconsensual sex, children, or animals?
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In the US Weekly article, apparently Bristol and Levi said they’re planning to get married in six weeks. This could be because they’re abstaining and impatient. Again, I’ve known people who are waiting to have sex who’ve had short engagements–although not quite that short–for that very reason.

It could also be, and of course speculation is rampant that it is, because of something very different: Is Bristol pregnant again? She does look like she’s put on weight. Some sites are saying an inside source has verified that she is. I don’t know. What I do know is that if she is pregnant, she just proved Oprah right.
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Here’s another tidbit: The impression I always got, and I think most people did, was that the pregnancy with Tripp (I’m all about uncommon names, but I can barely type that one with a straight face) was an accident. Mercede–who may have her own agenda; who doesn’t?–says that’s not true. She says Bristol and Levi were trying to have a baby. If that’s the case, does it compromise Bristol’s integrity as an abstinence spokeswoman? Does it make her motives more suspect? Or doesn’t it matter?
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Finally, I said early in this post that I agree with Obama’s request that the media leave candidates’ children alone. But in this case, Bristol welcomed the spotlight and the attendant scrutiny. I mean, who doesn’t even tell their own mothers about their engagement but lets them find out through a magazine cover? How does that support family values? What kind of message does that give to all the people to whom you’ve been preaching abstinence, Bristol? That you can’t make it without a man after all?