By now, the whole world knows that John McCain's vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin and her husband have five children: Track, a brave enlistee soon headed to Iraq, Bristol, Willow, Piper and baby Trig.
As you may have noticed, all of their children have unconventional names, four common nouns and one proper noun which is a common place name in English-speaking nations.
In addition to probably causing brutal teasing of their children in school, their naming raises troubling parallels to the worst excesses of recent celebrity baby-naming.
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For those new to English, a track is any road or path. A willow is a tree. A piper is someone who plays a pipe, such as a flute (like Governor Palin does herself), a fife, the bagpipes or other similar "musical" instruments. And trig is short for trigonometry. I took that in high school, but that's really all I know about it.
A cursory viewing of any three consecutive hours of VH-1 will reveal that these names have much in common with recent embarrassing celebrity baby names, such as Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter's, "Apple," Rachel Griffiths's son's, "Banjo," recovering sex addict David Duchovny's son's, "Kid," Scientologists John Travolta and Kelly Preston's son, "Jett," and "My Name Is Earl" star Jason Lee's son's, the truly awful "Pilot Inspektor."
By the time in her first introduction speech when Palin mentioned that her son Track had enlisted and would deploy on September 11, I honestly thought she'd said they had another child named "September," possibly the eleventh in a line of September Palins.
So what made Sarah and Todd Palin follow this onerous and cruel celebrity trend? A hidden wish to have their children taunted by the more normally named children of moose farmers, oil...(people?), snow sculpturists and snow-machine enthusiasts? An unthinking general heedlessness? Or a troubling celebrity-imitating trendiness? In any case, it raises real questions about their forethought as namers and the possible degree of celebrity worship in their family. I certainly hope at least some in the traditional media are looking into this aspect of the Palin for v.p. story.
Celebrity, celebrity, celebrity.
Alex
Choose Our President 2008