Levi Johnston has given a revealing interview on the US vice-presidential candidate, writes LARA MARLOWEin Washington
REMEMBER SARAH Palin, the moose-shooting, scripture-spouting, all-American governor of Alaska chosen by John McCain as his presidential running mate?
Well, according to her former almost son-in-law, Levi Johnston (19), Palin doesn’t know how to hold a gun, goes to church only three or four times a year, and is an abysmal mother.
Johnston’s interview, in the October edition of Vanity Fair, was hot gossip in Washington before it hit the newstands yesterday.
Palin, a political outsider, was ridiculed during last year’s campaign and was later blamed by McCain’s staff for losing the election.
Johnston started going out with Palin’s daughter Bristol, now 18, in 2005. He was a frequent visitor to the Palin home in Wasilla, Alaska, and lived with the family from November 2008 until he split up with Bristol in January 2009.
He says that when he learned McCain had chosen Palin as his running mate, “I thought, ‘Was this woman – who at home, would literally say things that did not make sense – really running for vice-president?”
During the campaign, Johnston recounts, “Cindy McCain [John’s wife] told Sarah that if they won, the family wanted me and Bristol to get married at the White House. Sarah was really excited, and Bristol, of course, loved it . . . After it was all over and they lost, the Palins weren’t pushing the wedding any more.”
The former future son-in-law disputes Palin’s campaign claims to be a devoted wife and mother. She and her husband Todd fought often, slept in separate rooms and talked of divorce, he says.
“There wasn’t much parenting in that house. Sarah doesn’t cook, Todd doesn’t cook – the kids would do it all themselves: cook, clean, do the laundry, and get ready for school.”
Johnston describes Palin as an idle airhead who never read newspapers, came home from work early and sat on the sofa in pyjamas watching women’s television programmes.
“She always wanted things and she wanted other people to get them for her,” he says.
He and Bristol were often dispatched to Taco Bell to fetch Palin’s favourite – the Crunchwrap Supreme.
Palin’s daughter Bristol fought with her, Johnston says. “‘I hate her’ definitely came out of Bristol’s mouth about Sarah. Sarah was always in a bad mood and she was stressed out a lot.”
Johnston met Bristol Palin playing hockey with her brother Track. Sarah the “hockey mother” attended perhaps 15 per cent of their matches, he says. He never saw her touch a fishing rod, and she once asked him how to hold the gun she kept in a box under her bed.
Palin cried when she learned that Bristol was pregnant. She initially urged the young couple to keep the pregnancy secret, and to let herself and Todd adopt the child. Palin’s own infant, Trig, who has Down syndrome, was given the middle name Paxson “because Paxson was Todd’s favorite place to snow-machine”.
Bristol and Levi gave their son the middle name Easton “for my favorite hockey equipment company”. Palin’s decision to give birth to Trig despite his disability appealed to American right-to-lifers. But Johnston says she ignored the baby and, with a “weird sense of humor”, would cuddle her grandson, his son, Tripp, saying, “No, I don’t want the retarded baby – I want the other one.”
Palin did not want Johnston’s mother, Sherry, to be present at the birth of his son because she had been arrested for selling prescription drugs illegally 10 days earlier.
Meanwhile, Johnston, an electrician, is savouring his proverbial 15 minutes of fame and has two agents, called Rex and Tank, filtering film and modelling job offers for him.