Oh, Why Not? (Update)

Since I seem to have ticked off Shannyn Moore fans, I'll go one more and tick off some Gryphen fans.

I only pop in to Gryphen's site maybe once a week, if that, because it just leaves me sick to my stomach. But I noticed an interview that he did with Levi's sister a little while back. Needless to say, it was full of things that contradict what Mercede has said in the past and what Levi has said only recently. But, that's not the point.

Basically, Sadie's mad that Bristol isn't letting her raise Tripp, or something like that. Oh, and the Palins of course are mean and vindictive and are out to get them. Or something like that.

And apparently, People Magazine is in the Palin's pocket. I thought they were in Obama's pocket. It's a tabloid, for Pete's sake. From the way things sound, my bet is that they were getting ready to do a glowing piece on the Johnstons, but whatever.

So, what about the custody thing and the seeing Tripp thing?

First of all, the Johnstons are doing nothing but continuously shooting themselves in the foot with the approach that they're taking. I am obviously a huge Sarah Palin fan, and I could give them better advice.

Levi, not getting a real job? Not finishing high school? Trashing the kid's family? Your mom and sister associating with the likes of Gryphen, Trig-Truther Extraordinaire? I can't think of a faster way to royally tick Bristol off and make it ten times harder to accomplish your stated goal of just being able to see Tripp.

Levi should have filed for joint custody a very, very long time ago. He had a lawyer, for Pete's sake. Alaska tends to favor joint custody. I doubt honestly that Bristol will even get sole custody now.

I'm actually hoping that they'll be able to smooth this over at some point so we can just move on from all of this drama. Of course, it's kind of hard to do that when your career is based on publicity that is only there if your name is associated with the Palins, and the best way to drum it up is to have a feud to feed the tabloid followers.

As far as Sadie's accuracy goes, since Levi has said publicly that he gets to see Tripp at least once a week because he's finally playing by the rules and coughing up some dough, either Sadie's lying or Levi's lying. Or Levi is just not telling his sister some things because he knows that she and Bristol don't get along. It's probably the latter.

Actually, Levi seems pretty happy with the way things stand now. He's just out to get as much money as he can out of this. Sadie also strikes me as being very dramatic about everything. One of those girls that I would have a hard time believing because they would tend to exaggerate.

And quite frankly, this situation is not unusual. Countless other families go through this type of thing every day. The idea that they are soooo persecuted and deprived just cracks me up.

I've got a niece and a nephew who live four hours from me. I haven't seen them in about three years. Why? Because my brother's busy, and I've been in college and working. He's got a wife, two kids and a job. He has a life. I have a life.

Mercede should be thankful she sees Tripp as much as she does, especially since it's pretty clear that she and his mother don't have the best relationship in the world. If Levi had gotten his act together and they had worked out joint custody, Sadie could probably see Tripp on Levi's time. That whole thing where Sadie went and trashed Bristol in venues like Star Magazine probably didn't help the relationship very much either, but I digress.

My mom wasn't too keen on some members of my dad's family. They weren't too keen on her (things are better now - this is when I was little), so she wasn't too crazy about me spending much time with them. I saw them maybe on Christmas and that was it. So? They were the "relatives," the ones you don't get to pick. They weren't my parents. I don't know if they cared or not, but I didn't. As long as I had Saturday morning cartoons, I was happy. Mercede ain't the mom, so it's kind of her tough noogies.

I have other Aunts that I'm very close to, but I only see them a few times a year, if that. It's called life. It's normal. I'm sure countless other people have similar stories.

Let's put this into perspective: Bristol works an eight-to-five job, she's raising a child, and she's living 45 miles away from Wasilla at this point. And, on occasion, she's traveling around doing her public gigs. If I put myself in Bristol's shoes, I'm thinking, "Get up, get kid ready, go to work, pick kid up, get kid ready for bed, crash, do it all over again, do some speeches because at some point I'd like to get through college and maybe buy a house and my ex's income is probably going to drop at some point and the child support payments right along with it..." My first priority would not be to drop whatever I was doing to suit my kid's Dad's sister that I don't even get along with anyway.

There's probably a high level of jealousy involved as well. The Johnstons were perfectly happy to trumpet how wonderful the Palins were during the campaign when their wagon was hitched to their star.

Lots of families have internal fights. They just don't get to run to the media to complain about them.

Settle this in court like adults and stop with the victim routine, okay? It's bull, and it's getting old.

Oh, and Gryphen, I think calling your blog "critical of Palin" is probably the understatement of the century. It's obvious that you hate the woman's guts.