Thank you, Bristol Palin, for showing us how youthful mistakes and irresponsibility can turn into a financial windfall.

Gail Collins puts it in context:

Bristol… is currently the teen ambassador for the Candie’s Foundation to prevent teen pregnancy. She is also available to speak about her experiences — for fees of $15,000 and up.

Earlier this year, Rachel Maddow reported on MSNBC that Bristol had filed paperwork to establish her own company to provide “lobbying, public relations and political consulting services.” This may have been done for tax purposes, but the fact is that for a foe of teenage pregnancy, Bristol has been making unwed motherhood look like a pretty attractive gig.

This week, she made her acting debut on the series “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” where she had been cast in the role of an unmarried teen mom named Bristol.

“The Secret Life of the American Teenager” is a product of the ABC Family network, and it consists mainly of attractive kids hanging around talking about their feelings. The show is so utterly detached from reality that the teenage boys talk about their feelings even when there are no teenage girls around to appreciate the effort.

The plots all seem to revolve around who is pregnant, formerly pregnant or worried about being pregnant. In the Bristol episode, there was a great deal of speculation about whether the main character, Amy, was “pregnant again.”

Amy plays the French horn — this comes up quite a bit — and she had actually gone off to a camp for young musicians in New York City in hopes of furthering her ambition to get into Juilliard. It was possibly the coolest music camp in the history of band instruments, since every camper got her own personal apartment in Manhattan. Then Bristol appeared at Amy’s door to offer to show her how the subway works and let her in on the camp’s secret theme: “We’re all teen moms. And musicians.”

To summarize: Bristol Palin is a teenager whose out-of-wedlock baby has turned her into a national celebrity and gotten her a cameo role on a popular TV show. Where she explains to the lead character that her status as an unwed mother wins her a slot in the world’s greatest music camp.

Well, I guess, a girl’s got to make a living.  Check out more at the link.