YOU BETCHA!!

Only in this teledadaist, reality-unencumbered, common senseless, cowardly, faux-objective goofball pomo world could any pundit look into the camera and say with a straight face that Sarah Palin even participated in a debate, much less ponder on whether she or Biden won it.

I have a procedure for handling these debates. In order to not fall on the floor and foam at the mouth, or spend ninety minutes projectile vomiting, I avoid looking directly at the wreckage; Mr. Polly does instead, while I block out sound with a Walkman tuned to a hip-hop station. I sit at the computer and read live-blogs, and drink. I have to circle around an event, and have it fed to me pureed.

No amount of pureeing, or other distancing divice is enough to make Sarah Palin digestible for me. The day-after montages of winks and mavericky high-kicking homespinning cowpatty-shoveling charm mongering made me want to push an ice-pick into my own brain, just to finish what Sarah'd started.

Once you have a new low in American culture, it doesn't take long to breach it. George Bush was a ridiculous figure, pathetic, gross, choking on his pretzels, massaging Angela Merkel, invading Iraq because why? According to Bob Woodward, only tonight, Bush said, "Because they're assholes." How can you bottom that?

With the relentlessly adorable runner-up, Miss Wasilla "I may not answer these questions the way you want" Governor of Alaska. And her stack of answers, written on index cards, from which she read her answers to Gwen Ifill's gentle puffball questions, those she didn't directly ignore.

Snarkopolitan has exclusively obtained a couple of Sarah Palin's answer cards :

I especially liked the Wh. Fl. of Srdr.

NO CLOTHES! NO CLOTHES!

The empress has been buck-naked from the get-go, pardon the folksiness. Her same canned speech, broken up and written on notecards, dispensed in small chunks after she declared her intention to ignore the moderator, made the fear that she would be wired under that beehive completely superfluous. Why bother simulating being knowledgeable? She's, like, only been at this for what, five weeks! She can bring her notecards to her next sit-down with the G-8. Angela Merkel will melt once she's been winked at. But will she wink at Sarah Palin?