So many have written and asked about this today, both in private Email and in the comments section that I need to address it. Here's the photo. It was posted below, but I am reposting it here, as a screen shot. You can see both the "Prom 08" reference as well as the caption.
There appear to have been three proms in the Mat-Su Valley in April, 2008. Palmer High School Prom on April 5th, Colony High School Prom on April 12th, and Wasilla High School Prom on April 19th.
I do not know which prom this would be. Levi Johnston attended Wasilla High School so it is reasonable to assume that his sister did as well, since in general you go to a school in a specific district. But that does not mean Levi's sister might not have attended another school's prom, if her boyfriend or date went to that school. Clearly, Mercedes is attending the prom; the other young woman is not, unless fashion is really being put on hold.
I believe that the dark-haired young woman is Bristol Palin. It looks like her and the "sister-in-law" identification would fit.
(However, one caveat to consider: If it's Wasilla's Prom, however, why is Bristol not attending? She's dating a "hot" senior, and I can't believe that young people in this community that, by all reports doesn't offer teens that much to do, would skip prom. So, if Mercedes is going to Wasilla's prom on April 19th, why is Bristol not going with her?)
So, what is to be made of this? Clearly, it would seem that this photo could well be proof that Bristol Palin could not be Trig Palin's mother. If the date of this photo is April 5th or 12th, there's no way this young woman is about to have a baby. If the photo is the 19th, the day after Trig's birth, it's hard (though not completely impossible) to formulate a scenario where Bristol would be photographed. Sometime during the day on the 19th, Trig and mother were released from Mat-Su. I supposed it is just vaguely possible that Mercedes, on her way to prom, would stop by to see her friend, and this photo could be somewhere in the Palin home (it looks like a basement "teen" space to me), but this is a huge stretch and I know it. It's also possible that Mercedes somehow was invited to a prom in another town (Anchorage perhaps) and this was several weeks later... then the idea that Bristol would be photographed next to Mercedes in her dress, is not so much of a stretch, and then the photo is meaningless.
But we just don't know.
If this photo was taken April 5th, April 12th, or April 19th, why remove it from the website after "babygate" broke? This would be the closest thing to REAL proof that Bristol did not give birth to Trig. "Look," Mercedes could say, "here's a picture of me and Bristol as I got ready to go to prom on... " The McCain campaign could also have released it, (and been very snotty about it.) End of story. Game over. But no one said that. No one did anything with this photo... other than see it was scrubbed from the Internet by mid afternoon on 9/1, and tell us the same day that Bristol is five months pregnant.
I can't believe that the people that did that ARE the dumbest people on the planet. They would have had to looked for a better way. The only reason that they announced Bristol's pregnancy on September 1 is because they did NOT have a better way. They had no other choice. They had no doctor who was willing to give a statement, no medical records they could release. Nothing but a five month pregnant teen.
I don't have answers at this point.
And while I've said all along that just because Bristol did not have Trig does NOT prove that Gov. Palin DID, we know the reality: Bristol was always by far the most plausible "other mother," for a large number of reasons. Take Bristol out of the equation, and while some will always have other suspicions, the story goes from very tough to impossible pretty damn quick.
As I have said often before on this website: you decide.
