Vanity Fairest

That was stunning, all right. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I feel stunned.

First, there was endless line of otherwise fairly intelligent Republican pundits who set aside their personal integrity in order to throw themselves on (or perhaps in front of) the Palin bandwagon. Even Rudy Giuliani championed her candidacy, though surely a lifelong New Yorker – and mayor of the city, during the terrorist attacks — couldn’t possibly take her and her small-town experience seriously.

Next came the Evangelicals, who were only too happy to embrace Bristol and her baby daddy, never you mind that scarlet letter poking out the front of her dress or the dirty details of the sin that put it there.

Not that they haven’t already overlooked McCain’s philandering. After all, he had just returned from Vietnam to find that his first wife, a former beauty queen herself, had gotten a little thicker in the thighs. Isn’t a POW entitled to a “get out of jail free” card on that piddly little commandment about adultery? He oughta be entitled to at least a little somethin’-somethin’ from the woman who would become, as she was last night, a perfect life-sized model for Mattel’s next big thing: Grandma Barbie.

And then, the main event: One Fargo-sounding hockey mom, staring vacantly at the teleprompter like a moose into the headlights, delivering her acceptance speech for the nomination for the vice-presidency of the PTA. Whoops! I mean USA.

Apart from the blatant lies about the facts of Obama’s experience and candidacy, Palin’s little Sarah-nade amounted to a 45-minute snark attack. I mean, had Giuliani not gone on for so long, she could have fit in those closing jokes about Obama’s mom, instead of ending so abruptly as she did.

And boy, oh boy, never was a candidate received with so much hooting and hollering from the oh-so-classy members of the Republican Party. Among whom, might I point out, there was nary an iota of pigmentation, of the hair (or what was left of it) or the skin (except for those two black guys they zoomed in on at the very end).

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah.

Sarah, please! If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Everybody knows that sarcasm is a way of deflecting an insult, and Palin’s mean-spirited attack did less to establish her as a bright and independently strong politician than it did to put her very much on the defensive, like a tenacious pit bull in lipstick who will just. Not. Let. It. Go.

I’m reminded of wrenching Molly’s jaws apart and shaking her entire head to knock free the slice of pizza she snatched from the countertop. Let it go! Loose! DROP IT! BAD GIRL!

Take it from a sarcastic person herself. I have had to learn the hard way that people don’t want to hear you bitching and moaning all the time.

Nobody likes a downer. Wipe that smirk off your face and say something positive.

Or not. Either way, Sarah Palin feels like a Christmas present to me. Unless people are even dumber than I thought.