Williams Long before any of us knew about Sarah Palin’s daughter’s baby-daddy, the stage was being set. And the narrative that preceded her apotheosis was one of life and death. The Palin family “chose not to murder that beautiful soul,” said an evangelical friend, as she closed her eyes and lifted her palms heavenward. “Choosing not” to “murder” is an interesting and controversial cooptation within the abortion debate, but this particular locution had an additional resonance for me. Only weeks before, this very friend had been going on and on about the marital infidelities of John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton. “I’d kill my husband if he ever did something like that. In a New York minute.” I’d heard this sentiment before, of course—I believe Representative Larry Craig’s wife had said something similar in public, some years before her husband was arrested in Minneapolis, in the very same airport bathroom through which so many Republican delegates are no doubt traipsing all this week.
