Is she really gone?

When I get a stomach virus, I wind up on the toilet several times a night. It awakens me from my sleep, and each time I get up to agonizingly go to the bathroom I hope it's the last time. But there is usually one more salvo, and when I think that my body is empty, I am awakened once again and all I can muster is some lingering stomach pain and another twenty minutes of lost sleep.

That's the way I view Sarah Palin. The lingering sickness that keeps coming back, and each time I hope this is the last time.

She left the Alaska governor's seat on Sunday, presumably for good, but didn't let the event pass without firing off a few salvos at those of us sitting on the toilet waiting for the pain to stop.

“So, how about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit making things up,” she said with an insistent voice, prompting loud applause and cheers from a mostly sympathetic audience gathered at a park in Fairbanks.

What did we make up, I wonder? The troubled teen pregnancy? The gun-toting self-proclaimed hunter? The inexperienced public servant, chosen for office by virtue of her looks? And why invoke the names of soldiers? Shouldn't simple truth be enough? How about, "In honor of the animals you shoot from helicopters, you stop talking?"

Warning of “anti-hunting, anti-Second Amendment circuses from Hollywood,” Palin said advocacy groups “use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets.”
She offered such individuals this message: “By the way, Hollywood needs to know: We eat, therefore we hunt.”

I think Hollywood does plenty for gunplay and blowing things up. Forgive them for not making more films showing the excitement of sitting in a deer stand with urine sprayed on your pants. There's more gunfire in movies and television than in the woods of Alaska, I'm guessing.

“It is because I love Alaska this much, sir, that I feel that it is my duty to avoid the unproductive, typical, politics-as-usual, lame-duck session in one’s last year in office,” Palin explained, reprising some of the rationale she laid out in announcing her decision to resign earlier this month.

Sir? Whom is she talking to? I suppose, if you follow her line of thinking, every politician in the final year of office should resign, because it's just politics-as-usual.

“It appears that she really doesn’t have a plan,” said Michael Carey, the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News and a public affairs commentator. “This is in keeping with her ad hoc approach to life.”
As for what her tenure has meant to this remote and still-new state – just celebrating its 50th anniversary of statehood this year – Carey said: “I think her big legacy is the incredible celebrity she became.

That's pretty much what the Cult of Palin was about, wasn't it? The celebrity she became and the way she was promoted - the MILF Governor of Alaska. All form and no substance. Next, I suppose we'll be treated to the autobiography and/or a TV movie (starring guess who?) and some more sound bites whenever Republicans gather to wax philosophic on the grand mysteries of life and shooting things.

Seriously, Sarah - if you're planning a comeback, stay in shape and don't let your looks go. That's all you have going for you.

As for now, the door is closing on your ass and I'm running out of toilet paper.