Lacking in credentials, Palin redeems herself as quality entertainment value

10/28/08 - Between all the betrayals, shady brokering and scandals that form the underbelly of our democracy, politics is at least as entertaining as your average Lifetime movie.

Take Sarah Palin for example. While she might not be an alcoholic divorcee in love with a former serial killer (oh, Lifetime.what will you come up with next?), Palin is probably the most entertaining vice-presidential candidate we've ever had.

Her perky incompetence and don't-give-a-darn lack of knowledge about world affairs is practically unparalleled. Sure, current V.P./cave ogre Dick Cheney did shoot a man in the face while duck hunting. Obviously, that will be a hard act to follow.

Also, I mean, let's be honest - Cheney looks (and acts) like something dredged up from the bottom of a murky cesspool of crippling, black- hearted despair. He's got the whole snarling swamp-monster thing down pat.

The super villain vibe works for him though. If he were a comic book character, he'd totally be some sort of evil mastermind that eats the souls of young children and gorges himself on drums of crude oil.

So, yeah, the entertainment value is definitely there.

And while Palin is probably a better shot than Cheney (she is, after all, an advocate of "aerial wolf hunting,") I'm sure she's still chock-full of arctic shenanigans. Shooting wolves out of an airplane is probably just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

I mean, First of all, she's a "hockey mom," which is kind of fun. And that's great because, if there's one thing America needs right now (as the War on Iraq decays into an utter shit-show and the economy hovers on the brink of perilous collapse) it's a V.P. who can lace up hockey skates and give you an encouraging slap on the back.

If I've learned anything from Mighty Ducks (I-III), it's that hockey helps people look within themselves and triumph over adversity. And if Palin ends up as V.P., she would be kind of like America's Coach Bombay - and America would be kind of like the down-on-their luck Ducks.

Only, instead of losing the peewee hockey championship, we'd risk losing any hope of economic stability and affordable health care, as well as whatever small shred of dignity we still have in the eyes of the global community.

So, it would be like a really depressing version of The Mighty Ducks.

Gung-ho support of children's ice-recreation aside, Palin's also got a real knack for backwoods foreign policy. I mean, Alaska is really close to Russia, which totally makes her an expert on foreign affairs. And that is awesome because, as it happens, I live pretty close to Stop and Shop, so going by that logic, I guess I'm qualified to be Secretary of Agriculture.

Palin's not all brains though she's also a former pageant queen and, come on we all know Joe Biden's not winning any beauty competitions. Having a V.P. who can rock a swimsuit without looking like a shriveled corpse might not raise our GDP or help fix inner city schools, but it will definitely raise our hotness profile both at home and abroad.

In times of great turmoil, we need a vice president prepared to set an example for other, uglier, countries - countries that don't understand the importance of high-quality hair products.

Moreover, the high-premium Palin places on looking good helps everyone. Like, you know how she's spent $150,000 on clothes in the last month? That's totally going back into the economy!

It's so great that Palin is doing her part to line the pockets of struggling fashion designers everywhere. Even more generous is the fact that, according to Palin, all of the clothes will be donated to charity.

So while downtrodden homeless people might not be able to eat Louis Vuitton bags, at least they'll be pushing their rickety shopping carts full of cans and broken electronics up the street in style.

What's so impressive is that Palin has only been in the public eye for a couple months, and already she's managed to paint herself as folksy, hollow and unapologetically misinformed. I mean, not only is she unable to (specifically) name a single newspaper that she reads, she can't even explain to a third- grader what the vice president actually does.

True story: she recently bungled an explanation of the office to an eight year-old.

But as the political process has shown us time and again, you don't have to be competent to get elected to high public office. I mean George W. Bush is so captivatingly inept that Oliver Stone already made a major movie about his life. Not only is Bush still alive, he hasn't even finished out his term.

Just think of the possibilities for Palin. She's probably even more unqualified than Bush. There'd be books, movies, magazine spreads, and TV specials galore.

Unfortunately though, this is real life - not a made-for TV movie (so, you know, the stakes are higher) If this were an hour-long television drama, I think the most fitting way for it to end would be Palin (dressed in a $5,000 suit) getting eaten by a polar bear as she spied on the Russians from her humble arctic abode.

Her pregnant teenage daughter would try to save her, but it would be too late, Palin would be gone. All that would remain would be a pair of broken black glasses, sunken in the snow.