What.

Pretty much the only thing I had to respect about Palin was that she ran a marathon. But now that the HuffPo reported this, I can go back to respecting absolutely nothing about her! Thanks guys!
r

Sarah Palin dropped out of a 5k race on Thanksgiving Day in Kennewick, Wash. The former vice presidential candidate and Alaska Governor quit the race because she wanted to avoid the crowds that were waiting for her at the end, according to The Tri-Cities Herald.

Palin was 1 of about 3,000 participants. The paper reported that her presence drew a "mass of onlookers." Palin announced that she would be running the race on Twitter.

The Most Terrifying Movie Ever

God Help Us All

Pre-order yours now, just in case there's a firewood shortage this winter.

Bonnie O'Neil of Newport Beach is a Complete Idiot

But all the other letters to the editor regarding Palin's stupid move last week are ingenious.

Read them here.

A couple faves:

My dislike of Sarah Palin has nothing to do with her sex or class. It has everything to do with her policies, her anti-intellectualism and her contempt for me. Her remarks stating that because my political views are different from hers and suggesting that because I live on the East Coast I’m not a real American are offensive, to say the least. I work hard. I pay my taxes. And the America I believe in is tolerant of our differences. If that makes me un-American, so were our founding fathers.

And:

Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd can poke fun at Sarah Palin all they want (“Sarah’s Straight Talk,” column, July 4, and “Now, Sarah’s Folly,” column, July 5), but I begin each day with a silent, heartfelt “thank you!” to the soon-to-be former governor of Alaska. If not for her breathtaking ignorance, which she refreshingly coupled with soaring arrogance, and if not for her coldblooded disdain for the lives of wolves, moose and polar bears, Barack Obama might not have won the presidency. America and indeed the world are infinitely indebted to her. Thank you, Sarah Palin, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you, indeed.

Alaska Breathes a Collective Sigh of Relief

You all should have heard by now that Ms. Sarah Palin suddenly quit her job last Friday. Why? She didn't say. What she did say, in her eloquent prose, was that to stay would be to give up. And to quit would be the right thing. Wha?

The press thinks this is either a) a bail out after a rough year, or b) a gear-up for a more national presence. All signs from her ridiculous popularity-hungry personality point to (b), which should make the other 49 states as nauseous as I feel at the thought of having to look at her and hear her stupid "speeches" for yet another season.

But I think it's c) she's gotten some offer for a big famous thing, like hosting her own 700 Club or something. She just craves the attention too much to get out of the spotlight without another, bigger spotlight waiting.

In Smug Sense of Satisfaction News...

Via Dan Savage (how many times do I have to tell you to subscribe to his podcast and read his column every week, people??):

Teen mom Bristol Palin and her fiancé, Levi Johnston, called it quits last week. So we've been cheated out of the Royal Rube Wedding we were promised during last summer's Republican National Convention—and another child will grow up without a father in the home, which is a tragedy for the child, according to America's Talibangelists.

Or that's what they said when Mary Cheney—remember that dyke?—had a baby with a woman she would marry if she could marry. It's weird that America's Talibangelists aren't making the same point now.

"Talibangelists." Classic.

Savage on Palin

I absolutely adore Dan Savage. He started a love and sex advice column in Seattle's The Stranger weekly yeeeeears ago, and I've only recently got on the Savage train via his podcast, The Savage Lovecast. I'm reading the archives of his weekly column right now, and came across this gem from September, which makes a great point (in bold below). Read this, then go get the podcast (it's free!).

The 17-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, the GOP's vice-presidential nominee, is pregnant. The news was released by the McCain camp during a busy week—a hurricane, the Republican National Convention, Dick Cheney getting us into a war with Russia—so it didn't receive the coverage it deserved. To recap:

Seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin got her ass knocked up five or so months ago by 18-year-old Levi Johnston. Among the hobbies listed on Levi's since-yanked MySpace page—"fishing, shoot some shit, and just fuckin' chillin'"—was this revealing tidbit: "I don't want kids." But Bristol, says her mom, "made the decision on her own to keep the baby," and is now engaged to Levi "Shootin' Shit" Johnston.

As the adoptive parent of a child born to a pair of unwed teenagers, I'm certainly not in favor of abortion in all circumstances. But I believe that it's a choice teenagers should be able to make for themselves—with input from their families whenever possible—and, so it seems, does the GOP's VP nominee. Sarah Palin is pleased that her daughter made the decision—on her own—to keep the baby.

But Sarah Palin doesn't believe that other girls should be able to make their own decisions. Sarah Palin believes abortion should be illegal in almost every instance—including rape and incest. So Bristol Palin is being celebrated for making a choice that Sarah Palin would like to take away from all other American women. Apparently, today's GOP believes that choice is a special right reserved for the wayward daughters of Republican elected officials.

Oh, and Sarah Palin also believes that birth control shouldn't be made available to teenagers, she opposes medically accurate sex education, and she backs abstinence-until- marriage sex "education."

Sigh.

The GOP has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into abstinence "education" programs during the Bush years. I believe this enormous investment of public funds begs the obvious question: Is our children abstaining? Sarah Palin's aren't. Despite this massive outlay on the part of the American taxpayer and the example set by her Christian parents, Bristol Palin became sexually active while still in high school. Excuse me, but if abstinence education can't keep the daughter of the evangelical governor of Alaska off the cock, what hope is there for the daughters—and some of the sons—of average Americans?

I'm a cad for writing this, of course, because shortly before Bristol and Levi were paraded before cheering throngs at the Republican National Convention, the Palins asked the media to respect their daughter's privacy.

Another special right: When it comes to respecting your family's privacy, Palin and the GOP see no need. They want to micromanage the most intimate aspects of your private life. And if their own kids fail to live up to the standards that Palin and the GOP seek to impose on your family, well, that's a private matter between the Palins, their daughter, their God, and the thousands of screaming imbeciles in elephant hats waving McCain/Palin signs on the floor of the Republican National Convention.