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Bristol Palin tweaks Margaret Cho, Keith Olbermann

By April MacIntyre Dec 5, 2010, 20:37 GMT

Just a gal from Wasilla, why so serious? Bristol Palin - "Dancing with the Stars" Rehearsal Departures - September 16, 2010 - Rehearsal Studios - Hollywood, CA, USA © Amanda Meredith / PR Photos

Bristol Palin was catapulted to notoriety in an awkward way, she was an unwed teen mother-to-be while her mother stood as vice presidential pick for Senator John McCain, and had to face the consequences of keeping the child and weathering a storm of tsk tsks. 

Since her son's birth, she has forged ahead to continue her education and keep her child.

The alternatives for her would have been abortion or adoption, neither of which was her choice.

She was selected by "Dancing with the Stars" producers after a whirlwind year of her baby daddy's ridiculous media blitzkrieg, aided by opportunistic comic Kathy Griffin who played the ex hockey player like a Stradivarius, roping him into interviews and telling reporters tongue in cheek that the young man was building them a "love igloo" in Wasilla.

Well, the left frothed over at Palin's arc on the reality competition, saying an army of Sarah Palin supporters were stuffing the vote box by calling in, as people complained bitterly the year before about Kate Gosselin, the mother of eight people loved to hate.

Bristol was snubbed in a couple of open blog posts, first from TV news pundit Keith Olbermann, and then from her cast mate from DWTS, Margaret Cho, who killed her with kindness, commiserating over weight issues (Cho has always been plagued with them in her own TV career) and claiming to be "a friend."

Palin snapped right back at Keith Olbermann after he named her the "Worst Person in the World" for her role as a spokesperson for abstinence with the Candies Foundation.

"Mr. Olbermann fails to understand that in order to have credibility as a spokesperson, it sometimes takes a person who has made mistakes," Palin, a 20-year-old single mother, said on Facebook.

Olbermann commented on the PSA that Palin did with her "Dancing With the Stars" castmate, "Jersey Shore's" Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, and said, "That's like saying George Bush kept us safe, except for that 9/11 thing!"

Palin added, "And yes, a teen mother talks about the benefits of preventing teen pregnancy. I have never claimed to be perfect."

Palin has now commented back to Cho on Facebook and denied her mother was the instigator in the booking on the ABC hit series.

From Palin's Facebook:

"I met so many interesting people on Dancing With The Stars.   It was an incredible experience that I will cherish the rest of my life.  I have explained my own motivations for accepting the invitation to dance, which included the simple fact that I was ready to get out of my comfort zone and try something new and challenging.  I thought dancing would also be a great way to exercise--and it was.  I thought it would boost my confidence--and it did.  Notably absent from this calculus were political considerations.  You want to talk politics, talk to my mom. You want to talk rumba, waltz and the beautiful Spanish paso doble, I'm your girl (but if you want to talk to the expert, call Mark). 

So with this in mind I was somewhat taken aback to read about me in a blog by my friend and fellow contestant, Margaret Cho.  In a post she called "Pistol Whipped" she wrote that "the only reason Bristol was on the show was because Sarah Palin forced her to do it. Sarah supposedly blames Bristol harshly and openly . . . for not winning the election,and so she told Bristol she "owed" it to her to do DWTS . . . ."  Let me shamelessly steal from Saturday Night Live: "Really, Margaret? Really?"

I will give my friend credit for creativity, and extra points for getting so many "facts" wrong in so few sentences.  Let me be blunt: my mom did not "force" me to go on DWTS.  She did not ask me either.  The show approached me.  I thought about it.  I made the decision.  After first worrying for me in terms of being exposed to those who hate us for what we believe in, both my mom and my dad became my number one supporters.  Anyone who watched the show could tell I performed better, and I felt better about myself, when they were in the audience.  I wanted to make them both proud, but politics had nothing to do with it. Loving my parents had everything to do with it. 

It saddens me that people would think that my mom would "blame" me for anything that occurred in the 2008 election--much less "harshly" and "openly." I think that canard (there, I said it again), has been floating around since then also.  I will set the record straight, though my mom already did in her bestselling book "Going Rogue"; there were a number of reasons President Obama won in 2008, but the primary reason was that the economy was starting to falter and the majority of voters thought Obama could do a better job than my mom and John McCain.  It turns out, two years later, the majority of voters were wrong, but we can talk about that another time. The point is, I seriously doubt anyone who considers herself a student of American politics truly believes I impacted even one vote in that election. 

There you have it.  Why do I want to set the record straight?  Because it is this type of hurtful and false narrative that people promote to make my mom look bad.  For 20 years my mom had my back--and for the rest of my life I will have hers. 

To my friend Margaret Cho, if you ever have a question, call me girlfriend.  Don't ever rely on "sources" who claim to know me or my family.  You will be taken every time. And we need to talk.  You say you "don't agree with the family's politics at all" but I say, if you understood that commonsense conservative values supports the right of individuals like you, like all of us, to live our lives with less government interference and more independence, you would embrace us faster than KD Lang at an Indigo Girls concert.

P.S. If you want to baby-sit Tripp, I could use a night off."