Willow Palin Tosses Homophobic Slurs Around on Facebook

(Nov. 17) -- Here's a quick quiz for the 5 million viewers who tuned in for the debut of "Sarah Palin's Alaska" Sunday on TLC.

1. When someone attacks Mama Bear, baby bears should:

a) Turn the other cheek.
b) Try a little diplomacy before responding with force.
c) Hurl anti-gay epithets.

If your answer was "c," you get a prize! (A dubious one!)

Willow Palin, Sarah Palin's 16-year-old daughter, is in the news after using homophobic slurs in a Facebook exchange with a classmate who wasn't a fan of her mom's new reality show.

The gossip site TMZ reports that the episode began when "Tre," a boy who apparently went to school with the Palin clan, posted his thoughts on the family's reality show debut Sunday evening.

"Sarah Palin's Alaska, is failing so hard right now," he wrote on his Facebook wall.

According to the website, which has obtained screen shots of the exchange, the teenage daughter of the former Alaskan governor retaliated by calling the boy "gay" and a "f****t."

"Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I've seen pictures of, your disgusting ... My sister had a kid and is still hot," Willow Palin apparently wrote on Facebook. "Tre stfu. Your such a f****t."

Then, Bristol Palin chimed in, too. "You're running your mouth just to talk s***," the 20-year-old "Dancing With the Stars" finalist told Tre. After more people began to criticize the new reality show, Bristol appears to have taken aim at another Facebook user by the name of "Jon," though she used no expletives this time.

"You'll be as successful as my baby daddy, And actually I do work my ass off," Bristol writes. "I've been a single mom for the last two years."

Late Tuesday night, Bristol apologized on her official Facebook page.

"Willow and I shouldn't have reacted to negative comments about our family. We apologize. On a nicer note, thank you for supporting the great competition in Dancing With the Stars!"

Some bloggers have said that as a minor, Willow should be off-limits. They also said the Palin cub was simply defending her "mama grizzly" in the inappropriate and misinformed style of a teenager.

"Willow Palin is a child, and she is not fair game," Tommy Christopher wrote at Mediaite. "Willow and her Facebook playmates weren't thinking about the rash of suicides related to anti-gay bullying, including young kids who were not, in fact, gay. They didn't create a world where gay equals unequal, they are a product of it."

Meanwhile, in an interview for a forthcoming story in New York Times Magazine, Sarah Palin says she's considering a 2012 presidential run, according to a preview of the piece published today. If she does, expect her limelight-seeking daughters to face even more scrutiny than they do now.

Read more at TMZ and Huffington Post.

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