Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page to call actress Lena Dunham a “pedophile” and the media “disgusting hypocrites” for attacking reality star Josh Duggar and his family.
Ms. Dunham, who stars in the HBO show “Girls,” wrote in her book, “Not That Kind of Girl,” that as a 7-year-old, she looked at and touched her younger sister’s vagina.
“One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn’t resist and when I saw what was inside I shrieked,” she wrote.
At the time the book was released and after some media backlash, she went on Twitter to defend herself.
“And by the way, if you were a little kid and never looked at another little kid’s vagina, well, congrats to you,” she tweeted.
Mrs. Palin posted on Facebook in all capital letters: “HEY LENA, WHY NOT LAUGH OFF EVERYONE’S SEXUAL ’EXPERIMENTS’ AS YOU HAUGHTILY ENJOY REWARDS FOR YOUR OWN PERVERSION? YOU PEDOPHILE, YOU.”
She says the media is hypocritical in how it handled Ms. Dunham’s revelations as compared to Mr. Duggar’s.
Mr. Duggar, now 27 and a star in the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting,” fondled five girls, four of them being his sisters, when he was a teenager.
“The intolerant left’s destructive personal intrusions and narrow-mindedness applied to their chosen targets are bad enough, but their double standards are beyond the pale,” Mrs. Palin wrote on Facebook.
“I’m not defending the Duggar boy’s obvious wrongdoing over a decade ago. The main victim in any story like this isn’t the perpetrator, it’s the innocent ones so harmfully affected. I’m not an apologist for any sexual predator, but I’m sickened that the media gives their chosen ones a pass for any behavior as long as they share their leftwing politics. Case in point, they suggest Lena Dunham’s sexual assault on her sibling is cute, and she’s rewarded for it with fame and fortune. Meanwhile, they crucify another, along with an entire family,” she said.
His parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, told Fox’s Megyn Kelly their side of the story Wednesday night.
“As parents, we felt we’re failures, you know?” Mrs. Duggar said on the broadcast that drew 3.1 million viewers, The Associated Press reported. “Here we tried to raise our kids to, to do what’s right and know what’s right. And yet, one of our children made really bad choices.”
They also were critical on the release of the information in the first place by police since their son and the victims were minors. Josh Duggar recently resigned from the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C.
Two of the victims, his sisters Jessa and Jill Duggar, who are both now married, will speak with Ms. Kelly in part two of the interview on Friday.
Piers Morgan lambasted the Kelly interview in his column for the Daily Mail, called “19 disgusting things I learned about the Duggars from their TV interview … and counting.”
In the column, he writes of the Duggars: “They didn’t report him to anyone for 16 months after he first confessed. That’s not them being ’failed parents’ as they would have us believe. That’s being an accessory to covering up a crime.”
Mrs. Palin isn’t the only person speaking out. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, a GOP presidential candidate, defended the Duggar family and called the media “bloodthirsty.”
“Josh’s actions when he was an underage teen are as he described them himself, ’inexcusable,’ but that doesn’t mean ’unforgivable,’ ” Mr. Huckabee wrote on his Facebook page after the scandal was revealed.
• Maria Stainer can be reached at mstainer@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.