We need a break from the global economic collapse. We're also appalled that this question has yet to be answered. So we hereby ask everyone to help us (or anyone else) solve the mystery of who gave birth to Alaska governor Sarah Palin's baby Trig.
Was it Sarah Palin, as she has always maintained?
Or was it Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol Palin, as lots of folks have speculated.
The background on this is everywhere, so we won't bore you with it again. What's prompting our current call for help is Andrew Sullivan's publishing of "the fourth picture" of Sarah Palin shortly before the birth of Trig in which she does not appear to be visibly pregnant (above right). This is a mystery that should have been solved months ago, either by the release of irrefutable proof that Sarah Palin is Trig's mother OR proof that she isn't. It is also a mystery that could represent either a massive fraud or an organized political hit-job.
This is the sort of question that digital citizen-journalism excels at. The mainstream media has so far failed (miserably) to address the issue, so it's up to us.
Do you know for a fact who Trig's mother is? Then please scan some evidence (medical records or photos, presumably), set up an anonymous Google account, and email them to us. We will then send them on to several news organizations (and Andrew Sullivan) at the same time. tips@alleyinsider.com
Here's more from Andrew Sullivan:
As Dish readers know, there are only three public photographs that I could find of Sarah Palin pregnant with Trig (the McCain campaign insisted there were "loads" and then was forced to retract). But we now have another. The date of this photograph, which turned up on a Flickr account, has been clearly established as March 26, 2008:
Here's a link from the Alaska state website discussing the event. Here's a news video.
That's barely three weeks before she gave birth to Trig, a full-term, 6 pound baby. It's also around a week before video footage of Palin, captured here. Since Palin refused throughout the campaign to provide any medical records (although, in classic Palin style, says she has), we only have three photographs of her pregnant and one doctor's letter, released hours before the polls opened November 3. If you're interested in why any sane person would ever doubt a mother's announcement of her own pregnancy, read this.
Maybe this photo has been photo-shopped. Maybe Palin had an anomalous pregnancy that showed far, far less than her previous ones, one that went from close to nothing to a serious bump in two weeks. Maybe the angle in the photo is misleading, and leaning toward us her pregnancy is concealed. Maybe her fifth labor really did take 26 hours combined via a speaking engagement (as amniotic fluid was leaking) and an 11 hour airplane flight (when a birth could have begun at any moment at extreme risk to the child), and maybe the bizarre and, to my mind, incredible stories she has told about the pregnancy and labor are true (there is still a chance they are). But if all these things are true, the Palin camp has had months to provide what would be instantly available records to dismiss all and every "insane" blog speculation about this. And yet none came - on or off the record.
I begged the McCain campaign by private email and in a private meeting to give me something - anything - to kill the story off. I promised to run any evidence that would blow this out of the water. That offer still stands. Please make me look like an idiot for asking these questions. But they didn't offer a thing, asserting that even asking the question was an outrageous reputation-destroying offense.
