I have a slight disagreement with this.  Sorry.  My sense is that most of the attacks have been against McCain and not about the baby or anything much like that, though when those have occurred they have been virulent.

But how do you say that Palin is the one who "exposed" her daughter to this without saying that she was "exposed" to the nation as a whole and to the press.   Why hasn't she protected the privacy of her daughter?    Yet we are supposed to keep hands off?  It's not the daughter who we question.  It's the mother!  And I think that's fair game.  Not that Palin should be disqualified because she has a pregnant daughter, or small kids so how can she do the job, but rather that she put her daughter in this public position and now is blaming everyone else for noticing and questioning.

I'll also point out that the forces on whatever the other side is aren't so quiet either.  You ever hear anyone tell the right blogosphere or bloviators to keep quiet about Michelle Obama or Rev. Wright or any of that?   Nope!  But the left should be meek.

In general, Al, I agree that strategically it would be better to let this just play out without so much hysteria.  However, I'm not sure that no matter what anyone would have said in any negative light wouldn't have been spun as "the left media that favors Obama and the crazy netroots" attacking this poor, helpless small-town regular just-like-you-and-me woman.   They were looking for a bogeyman, even if they had to invent one.