The XX Factor: What women really think.

Forgetting Sarah Palin

Thank God our country now has bigger and better things to think about than calculating the precise degree of Sarah Palin’s venality, ignorance, and greed. Did she bilk the RNC of $150,000 in her shopping sprees, or was it tens of thousands more? (The paper trail will eventually emerge on that one, now that lawyers are descending on Alaska to confiscate the gladrags.) Is she so dim she doesn’t know Africa is a continent, or only so dim she can’t name a single newspaper or magazine she’s ever read? Did she violate ethics laws in pursuing the firing of her ex-brother-in-law, or did her petty, nepotistic despotism remain within perfectly legal bounds? Guess what: We no longer have to care! To paraphrase Jon Stewart talking about Karl Rove the other night: Sarah Palin can’t hurt me anymore.

Unless … can’t you see Palin emerging as the leader of a splinter hard-right group, possibly even a third party? A perverse part of me—the part that enjoyed this endless campaign’s operatic grotesquerie–sort of wishes she would run in ’12, because if she did manage to get the nomination (which, as Anne observes, good friggin’ luck), she would have to debate Barack Obama, which would make for one of the most entertaining spectacles American politics has ever seen.