Every baby’s entry into the world is a moment of wonder, joy, and terror. Joy for the family, usually, terror for the baby (we imagine), and wonder for the father, if he’s there, because let’s be honest, he’s gotta wonder whether that opening that just fit an entire baby is ever going to fit part of him again. But the birth of little seven-pound-seven-ounce Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston on Sunday in Palmer, Alaska, was weighed with the additional burden of responsibility. See, little Trippy (can we call him Trippy?) is already facing pressure. He has to turn his two unmarried teenage parents, Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston, into a family. He has to distract America from the murky new story of his drug-dealing grandmother. He has to look enough like his mother, Bristol, that conspiracy theorists will stop claiming he’s a fake baby concocted to cover up her secret previous pregnancy. He will have to, for the rest of his life, answer preppy people when they ask him if “he’s a third” because of his vaguely ridiculous name. He has to grow up wholesome enough for his other grandmother, Sarah Palin, to be able to use him as a talking point during her run for the presidency in 2012. And finally, and most importantly, he has to be so adorable that he can compete with the blinding, raw magnetism of his father, Sex on Skates.
It’s a lot to put on a little baby’s rubbery little shoulders. But he may be up to the task — he’s already performed a minor Christmas miracle, by rendering Andrew Sullivan speechless. And anyway, however the next eighteen years of his life turn out, we can guarantee him one thing: They’ll be Trippy.
Bristol Palin Welcomes a Son [People]
