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. 

Until last Saturday.

I’m sitting on my mat at Sanctuary for Yoga in Green Hills, getting ready to enjoy one of my last classes there. I’m stretching out a bit, doing an Easy Seated Twist, when I look over my right shoulder and see a girl standing in the doorway.

“Huh,” I think to myself. “That girl looks like Nicole Kidman.”

And as I twist again and glance over my left shoulder, it all comes flooding to me … really tall and thin, pregnant, married to Keith Urban, lives in Nashville … light bulb!

“That IS Nicole Kidman!”

My very first celebrity sighting! Or at least, my very first sighting in which the recognition of the celebrity was exciting. I was kind of oblivious when I was in LA.

I have no idea why Nicole Kidman would deign to attend a group yoga class, on a Saturday morning no less. SELF Magazine did a piece last fall about LeAnn Rimes practicing yoga at this studio, but that was private lessons.

But all the yogis in class all handled it pretty well. I caught a few bits of conversation about someone seeing her loading up at the salad bar at Whole Foods last week, but once class started, we were all business. Of course I stared at her during every single Downward Facing Dog, but at least I didn’t start humming “Come What May.”

I do have to say that seeing her up close actually didn’t make me feel like a stubby little troll. In fact, it was her too-yellow frizzy hair that was a little troll-like. She is obviously a very attractive woman, but mostly, she just has a recognizable face. Otherwise she blended right in with all the other wealthy-looking 40-something ladies of leisure in my class, down to the big ring on the gnarled hands that are a good 20 years older than her shiny, taut face.

Let me tell you, that porcelain skin you see on TV? It looks like Saran Wrap in real life.

I’m not gonna lie. I really almost went up to her after class to ask about those rumors that Tom Cruise is really gay and paid her and is now paying Katie Holmes to be part of his entourage and to help both their careers by having highly public romances immediately before the movie in which they co-starred was released. I mean, that has to be true, right? And what about Scientology?