January 22, 2010
Bristol Palin Wants the $$ in Levi's Levis
Steve Weinstein READ TIME: 2 MIN.
The Levi-Bristol saga continues. Bristol Palin, the daughter of former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska governor Sarah Palin, has gone to court for some of the money Levi Johnston made from his naked photo spread in Playgirl.
TMZ first reported on the court documents, in Bristol's lawyer is demanding $1,750 a month on child support from Johnston, the father of their child. The two are not married and were not at the time of their son's birth.
The Palins believe that Johnston earned "in excess of $105,000 in 2009 through various media interviews and modeling related activities." Under local Alaska law, a non-custodial parent must pay 20 percent of income up to the exact figure of $105,000 a year--or $1,750 a month.
According to Bristol Palin, she has received only $4,400 since son Tripp was born 13 months ago from Johnston. His lawyer, Tank Jones, has responded that Johnston has, in fact, paid out more than $10,000 during that time. He did not, however, say exactly how much Johnston has earned.
The media has speculated about Johnston's income since he has become something of a celebrity. His rise to fame began at the Republican convention in Minneapolis last summer, when the Palins dressed him up in a suit, groomed him and put him on display on the podium with the family of John McCain, the presidential nominee.
Since then, his relationship with the Palins has gone steadily downhill. He has been engaged in a very public he-said-she-said spat with Sarah Palin that has spanned talk shows and supermarket tabloids.
In her mega-best-selling memoir, Going Rogue, Sarah Palin did not go after Johnston. She did express heart-wrenching anguish about her teen daughter's pregnancy playing out before a national audience. But the 413-page tome doesn't contain a single reference to the father of her granddaughter, soon-to-be Playgirl model Levi Johnston.
Johnston has family problems of his own. In November, his mother was sentenced to three years in jail for dealing the prescription drug Oxycontin. The case probably didn't buttress his pleas to share in child-rearing for Tripp.
Johnston sensationally posed nude for online skin magazine Playgirl. Johnston showed lots of skin but not the instrument that brought him temporarily into the Palin family--and so much notoriety.
Steve Weinstein has been a regular correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, the Advocate, the Village Voice and Out. He has been covering the AIDS crisis since the early '80s, when he began his career. He is the author of "The Q Guide to Fire Island" (Alyson, 2007).
