Bizarre Media Phenoms: The Baby-Bump Watch

We at DJ! are not obsessed with finding ways to bump our website stats. First of all, we don't carry advertisements (YouTubes of X-rated condom commercials don't count). We only write about famous unintended pregnancies when it is relevant to an issue near and dear to us.

So it doesn't surprise us that the latest rumour circulating on the 'net concerns the sighting of a purported baby-bump on the concave surface of Michelle Obama's statuesque and zaftig body.

The best - and only place, in our humble opinion - to read about this non-event would be Wonkette's blogpost. From the combox:

"i saw one piece of so called evidence where she was viewed slightly from the side, and arrow pointed at her thigh declaring it a baby bump. now i know a lot of white folks these days aren’t used to seeing those on a woman, but no her thigh is not a baby about to pop out of her."

Exactly.

Ooops, she's done it again.

Surely not on purpose, to create a media brouhaha around the release of her new CD and the start of her tour to promote the CD. But Britney Spears is making headlines. Again.

The Parents Television Council is warning parents about the Britney Spears song "If U Seek Amy" and urging radio stations not to broadcast it because the nonprofit organization believes it "would violate the broadcast indecency law" if aired between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Saying the title phrase quickly out loud produces a sound akin to spelling out the F-word, said PTC president Tim Winter. "There is no misinterpreting the lyrics to this song, and it's certainly not about a girl named Amy," he said of the track, the third single from Spears' new Jive album, "Circus."

And what is the PTC? It is directed by Brent Bozell:

Founder and President of the Media Research Center, Mr. Bozell runs the largest media watchdog organization in America. Established in 1987, the MRC has made "media bias" a household term, tracking it daily and printing the compiled evidence biweekly in its well-known Notable Quotables, which also releases an annual "Best of NQ" edition selected by a nationwide panel of judges active in the news industry. His most recent book, Weapons of Mass Distortion: The Coming Meltdown of the Liberal Media, was released in July of 2004. Other MRC books include And That's the Way It Is(n't): A Reference Guide to Media Bias; Pattern of Deception: The Media's Role in the Clinton Presidency; How to Identify, Expose and Correct Liberal Media Bias; and Out of Focus: Network Television and the American Economy.

Right. That's it in a nutshell. By the way, if you check the list of articles recommended, written by members of its advisory board, you'll note that most focus on the evuls of S-E-X. Violence? Not so much. Oh, it seems really cozy with another group that spends a lot of time shrieeekkking about stuff that offend religious fundamentalist rightwingnutz sensibilities - the homophobic, misogynist, no-choice and reactionary organization Focus on the Family.

Some progressives expressed discomfort with the number of times that the "G" word appeared in US president Obama's inaugural speech. Perhaps a strategic use of that word, in order to demonstrate that religious fundamentalist rightwingnutz don't own the monopoly on faith is a savvy thing to do.

As for the song .... sure hope it doesn't affect the future sales of Jamie Lynn Spears' book about parenting, Christian-style-like.

Teen pregnancy: no longer shameful, still a concern.

It may be that the intense media visibility awarded to Bristol Palin’s unintended pregnancy will bring about a shift in public attitudes towards teen’s sex education.

Sarah Palin’s extreme and fundamentalist views on sex education, rape, and recently, on bombing abortion clinics have given these issues prominence in the US presidential election campaign. A successful fund raising initiative for Planned Parenthood in the US was launched by email. Thousands of thank you cards were sent to the Republican VP candidate in acknowledgement of her pivotal role in provoking US citizens to donate to Planned Parenthood.

Shortly after Palin’s nomination, e-mails began circulating suggesting that pro-choice women make donations to Planned Parenthood in her honor. As of this week, Planned Parenthood has received more than 40,000 donations in Palin’s name, totaling more than $1 million.

And tabloids reported that Jamie Lynn Spears may have unintentionally become pregnant again. Regardless of whether the rumour is founded or not, the public reaction seems to indicate that nobody believes in that quaint saying ‘Ignorance is bliss’ any longer. Even the young yet wise-cracking Juno took responsibility for her mistake and took charge of her choice.

A sensible, well-informed young woman observed the media frenzy around the Palin and Spears unintended pregnancies and wrote a well-researched article about concerns regarding adolescent sexuality.

Every year in the U.S, over one million teenagers become pregnant. Most recently, pregnant teens have flooded Planned Parenthood health centers. Last year, Planned Parenthood centers provided sex education to 1.2 million teens and adults. This year will yield roughly 750,000 pregnant teenage girls, which is a number 12 times more than that of people diagnosed with AIDS in 2008, as well as the total number of persons expected to die from some form of cancer this year.

In regards to percentages, this averages out to about 11 percent of all U.S. children being birthed by teens this year. By the time a teen has reached the age of 19, seven in ten teens have experienced at least one sexual encounter. … It is important that sex education be definitely enforced within schools and should not only approach the idea of sex and teens from an abstinence-only standpoint. According to an analysis of more than 115 studies researched by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (NC), teen sex education programs proved ineffective when including only abstinence-only material, by which teens were neither encouraged nor influenced to abstain or delay sex until a more age-appropriate time.

According to Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, effective sex education is based on “medically accurate information” that is both abstinence-based and also teaches contraception and proper sex initiation, which has proven to be more effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies. Richards argues that for the past eight years, roughly $1.5 billion or more of taxpayers’ money has been “wasted” on ineffective abstinence-only programs. Richards also demands that education and initiation of sex education must change with the next administration because the current policies have proven unsuccessful. “When it comes to sexuality education, there should be no debate. The only way our children can be prepared is to be informed; this isn’t about ideology, it’s about the health and safety of our kids.”

First posted at Birth Pangs

Unintended pregnancy: Ooops, I did it again!

This is from the ‘we-just-could-not-make-this-stuff-up’ files. Remember Jamie Lynn Spears? The National Inquirer (your blabbing friends sold you out, JL) is reporting that yup, she is pregnant again. Birth Pangs knows that this is one of the predictable outcomes of teaching Abstinence-Only programs to randy adolescents. For example, this:
The unplanned pregnancy came as a shock to Jamie Lynn, who’d been breast-feeding her infant daughter Maddie Briann, insiders say.

“Jamie Lynn believed she couldn’t get pregnant while she was breast-feeding,” said the close source. “She’d expected to have her period by early September.” A home pregnancy test came back positive and Jamie Lynn cried her eyes out, said the source.

Her mother Lynne was livid when she found out, divulged an insider.

Say Lynne, why didn’t you give Jamie Lynn the real facts of life, especially since she likely knows by now that it isn’t The Great Crawfish who delivers babies to happy homes in the middle of the night. Or whatever it is that mamas in Louisiana tell their children when they are 5 years old.

First posted at Birth Pangs.