I can’t help feeling sorry for Bristol Palin. I doubt that she planned to be married and a mother at 17, and I doubt that she ever wrote in her dream book that she wanted to be the most famous teenage mother-slash-bride in America. It might not have happened (doubtful, but possible) if she didn’t live in a state where the governor opposed sex education (except, of course, for abstinence-based sex ed, which is dubious in the best circumstances and achingly ironic in this case).

Let’s say you’re a mother and someone offers you a job that would cause your pregnant teenager’s name and image to be plastered across every newspaper and web site in the country. I’m not judging, just asking: Do you accept that job?

Or let’s say you’re the person offering that mother the job in question, and your people have thoroughly vetted her and know all about the daughter’s pregnancy. Are you happy and proud to be able to take advantage of the situation and get everyone lined up behind the idea that anyone who does judge this family (which of course I’m not) is taking cynical political advantage of a private matter?

Is that the plan all along: to make this private family matter a talking point? It’s sort of a trap for the opposing side, isn’t it? Because there’s no right thing that they can say about it (or at least nothing they can say that you can’t twist into the wrong thing). And even if they say nothing, you can rally around her as if she were being attacked.

I’m glad it’s not my job to answer these questions, because I don’t know what I’d say. Heck, it’s not even my job to ask them, because it contributes to the oversimplification of complex issues. That’s probably not very responsible, but sometimes it’s irresistible.