'Tripp to nowhere' - Boston Herald

“BRISTOL PALIN: LIFE’S A TRIPP” Series premiere tonight at 10 on Lifetime.: C

She’s already being sued over her reality show and it hasn’t even aired yet.

Chalk up another dubious achievement for Sarah Palin’s oldest daughter Bristol, the unwed mom, abstinence advocate, memoirist, “Dancing with the Stars” runner-up and “Glee” basher.

Last week, talent manager Stephen Hanks sued her and Lifetime for a bar confrontation in September that is key to the premiere and the episode that follows at 10:30.

As the cameras captured, Hanks viciously heckled Bristol as she rode a mechanical bull in a Los Angeles club.

“Did you ride Levi like that?” he asks, referring to the father of her toddler, Tripp.

He volleys several disgusting vulgarities about the ex-governor of Alaska and the onetime Republican vice presidential nominee.

Encouraged by her friends and no doubt bolstered by the camera crew following her, Bristol confronts Hanks to find out why he doesn’t like her mom.

“Is it because you’re a homosexual?” she demands.

Hanks claims he didn’t give Lifetime permission to film him and that Bristol later defamed him.

Despite the lawsuit, a Lifetime rep said yesterday that the episodes will not be edited.

No one comes off looking good here.

(One tape of the encounter on YouTube has received almost a million hits.)

Controversy aside, “Life” seems to have no meaning beyond giving the 21-year-old a platform for her parenting views and criticism of Los Angeles.

Bristol, for all her whining and tears tonight, has advantages other young single moms can only dream about. Her L.A. “job” is actually a volunteer gig with the charity Help the Children. Her parents’ friends give her the use of their home â€" a mansion so big it probably could qualify for statehood.

She teases and later berates her 17-year-old sister, Willow, into becoming Tripp’s nanny. Tripp seems like a fun kid, but what teenager wants to be saddled with a toddler full-time? Certainly not Bristol, apparently.

Sarah encourages her to pursue her dreams and acts as mediator between her daughters.