The satirical, left-leaning blog Wonkette seems to have gone too far in a recent post titled, “Greatest Living American: A Children’s Treasury of Trig Crap On His Birthday.”
The post, written by Jack Stuef, contains numerous off-color “jokes” about Sarah Palin’s 3-year-old special needs son Trig Palin, and implies he may have been conceived as a result of incest.
“What’s he dreaming about? Nothing. He’s retarded,” wrote Steuf.
The piece also includes several Youtube clips of Trig which mock the child and his disability.
Mediate columnist Tommy Christopher, the father of two special needs children himself, emailed Wonkette chief editor Ken Layne, requesting a comment on the post. Layne’s response was unapologetic: “On whose account are you requesting that Jack Stuef remove a post mocking Sarah Palin’s well-documented use of her special needs child as a political prop? Is this coming from Mediaite? Which editor?”
Despite Wonkette’s lack of remorse for publishing the piece, some of the blog’s ad sponsors do not seem to find any humor in making fun of children with mental disabilities.
Papa John’s, Vanguard, and Huggies all announced today that they will be dropping their advertisements from Wonkette.
“Thank you for alerting us to this. We’ve taken step to make sure our advertising doesn’t appear on that site in the future,” tweeted Papa John’s Pizza’s corporate twitter account.
Wonkette shot back at Papa John’s, tweeting, “We beat up on Sarah Palin’s craven use of her son as a POLITICAL PROP. Child protective services should take Trig away.”
In another tweet, Wonkette called on consumers to boycott Papa John’s.
However, later on in the day, Layne told Adweek, “Jack [Stuef] has been admonished and put on night probation until further notice. Anything involving Palin, I want to make it extra clear that *Palin* is the problem with America. Not her kids. Not her little kid, anyway.”
Layne also sarcastically noted that giving Stuef comment deletion duties was fair punishment because “he gets to read all the Palin fans’ insane unmoderated comments calling him an asshole and threatening to kill him.”