CITY PAPER: After three days that contained enough absurdist theater to qualify for the Fringe Festival, the image 
I’m left with from the Republican National Convention is of the future Mrs. Levi Johnston — you know her better as Bristol Palin — standing onstage with her family and the McCains, being showered with the kind of wild-eyed applause usually reserved for that other rock star in the presidential race.
There she was, all of 17, having sprouted a baby bump and a sketchy-looking fiancé since arriving in Minneapolis, and feeling the love from an arena — and a nation — full of Republicans who drenched Jamie Lynn Spears with scorn when she got herself in the family way. To them, Bristol was a hero, and her pregnancy a “blessed event” rather than an unfortunate episode in some tacky political telenovela.
The whole thing gave me a weird flashback to when I was 15, standing on a church altar and holding my best friend’s baby — Laura had a son at 16, and a daughter at 19 — while he was baptized. I certainly don’t recall applause, however, and while I heard Laura called many names by many people during those difficult years, “hero” wasn’t one of them. MORE