Actually, this is a good thing

I know it's going to be tempting to gloat over this, but avoiding a shotgun marriage designed to further your mother's political career is a very smart and self-aware move on the part of Bristol Palin:

Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin, the teenage daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, have broken off their engagement, he said Wednesday, about 2 1/2 months after the couple had a baby.

Johnston, 19, told The Associated Press that he and 18-year-old Bristol Palin mutually decided ''a while ago'' to end their relationship. He declined to elaborate as he stood outside his family's home in Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage.

He also said some details of the breakup, rumors of which had been swirling on the Internet, were inaccurate.

Bristol Palin said in a statement that she was devastated about a report on Star magazine's Web site that quoted Levi's sister, Mercede, as saying Bristol ''makes it nearly impossible'' to visit the teenagers' infant son, Tripp. The baby was born Dec. 27.

''Unfortunately, my family has seen many people say and do many things to `cash in' on the Palin name,'' said the statement, which was issued through the governor's political action committee. ''Sometimes that greed clouds good judgment and the truth.''

SarahPAC spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton did not immediately respond to calls seeking further information. The governor's spokesman, Bill McAllister, declined comment.

The hideous irony is that Sarah Palin wanted to hold up her daughter as a poster child for the pro-life movement who did the "responsible" thing and had the baby and decided to marry the baby's father, just creating the perfect Christofascist Zombie Dream Family that mom could trot out during her inevitable 2010 presidential run. Well, Bristol is eighteen and she can do what she wants. And what she does not want is to trap herself in marriage to an immature boy when she has a baby to raise. If Bristol's mom really wanted to be proud of her daughter, she'd be proud of having raised a daughter who is learning from her mistake and not digging a deeper hole for herself; a daughter capable of making independent choices.

Good for Bristol Palin. We wish her the best. God knows she's going to need it, with that horror of a mother.

UPDATE: The inimitable Jon Swift, on Why Bristol Palin is Different.