Gretchen kept telling me, all morning long today, that my dear sister-in-law Katje was calling, desperate to speak with me. So, when I had a spare moment between consultations, I called her back.
Tom: Katje, what’s up?
Katje: It’s Rob Roy. He’s gone totally bull [expletive].
Tom: About what?
Katje: Sarah Palin. Last night, Rob saw her debut as a news commentator on Fox and well, just completely lost it, Tom. He was like, hopping up and down on the living room couch, screaming at the television.
Tom: Now, see, that’s exactly what the people at Fox expect liberals like you and Rob to do, Katje. By flipping out like that, Rob’s validating Palin. Doesn’t he realize that?
Katje: Rob’s been so worked up about Palin, I sort of doubt he realizes much of anything. This morning, I had to tell him he had put his jockey shorts on backwards.
Tom: Rob does tend to get wrapped up in things.
Katje: Yeah, well, right now, when it comes to Sarah Palin, he’s wrapped up like King Tut. I don’t think he managed to accomplish a single productive thing at work today.
Tom: Gee, that’s not good.
Katje: It certainly isn’t. And if he keeps obsessing about Palin like this, his boss is bound to notice.
Tom: What did Palin say that pushed all of Rob’s buttons like that?
Katje: Practically anything, actually. Rob was livid from the very first instant he saw her on The O’Reilly Factor. He started out shouting she has no business being on television.
Tom: Well, you can’t blame her, really. I bet she made more money last night than she would get for an entire year as the governor of Alaska.
Katje: No doubt – I bet that’s why she quit.
Tom: Sure – in order to devote more time to her book tour, speaking engagements, and now, playing a conservative talking head. Since she quit the governorship, I bet she’s made bigger bucks than the freaking Kodiak king salmon run.
Katje: And doesn’t Rob realize that – it really jerks his chain just to think about how rich she’s gotten, spouting nothing but incomprehensible conservative word salad.
Tom: Hey, after all, you have to consider that now that George W. Bush is gone, all of the morons and retards who thought he was a genius have nobody they can look up to. She’s simply inherited his natural political base, it seems to me. But what, in particular, got Rob so jammed up?
Katje: For starters, how O’Reilly just kept feeding her pap questions, like how if she and John McCain were running the country, how would they take care of ten percent unemployment. So what did Palin say? “A policy does that by reducing taxes on the job creators.” When Rob heard that, he hit the ceiling.
Tom: Practically everyone favors the idea of lower taxes, you know. Finding someone who doesn’t is like finding somebody who enjoys getting up at six o’clock on Saturday morning to visit the dentist for a root canal.
Katje: Now that you mention it, Rob was howling like somebody getting one without any Novocaine. Then, when O’Reilly asked her about Iraq’s role in 9/11, and she told him about how she lectured McCain’s campaign strategists on Saddam’s involvement, I thought Rob was going to bust a blood vessel or something.
Tom: I think Rob’s got to learn that stuff is all just entertainment.
Katje: Entertainment? Maybe for you. But what happens if she gets nominated to run for President in 2012?
Tom: That, I am dead certain, would be the best thing that has happened to the Democratic Party since Barry Goldwater ran against Lyndon Johnson. Barack Obama would make mincemeat out of her in a presidential debate.
Katje: Maybe, but look at what she said about not being prepared to debate Joe Biden – that it’s all “gossipy anonymous accusations.” I mean, the person who said that is named Steve Schmidt! He worked for John McCain! Do you really think Obama could win a debate against someone like Palin, who’s so blissfully disconnected from reality, she doesn’t even realize that what she’s saying is utter nonsense?
Tom: Well, I must admit, you do have a point there.
Katje: You bet I do! Did you watch her on Fox?
Tom: No, I didn’t.
Katje: Okay, you may not believe this, but O’Reilly essentially came right out and asked her if she is, in fact, unintelligent, and she said that the analysis of her debate with Joe Biden revealed that he committed more gaffes than she did. And when she said her opponents don’t like her because of her “commonsense conservative solutions,” Rob had a fit. “They don’t like you because you’re an imbecile!” he yells at the top of his lungs. I had to restrain him so he wouldn’t throw the remote control at the new 1080p flat-screen high-definition TV we just got for Christmas!
Tom: Better not let him watch The O’Reilly Factor without adult supervision, then, I suppose.
Katje: Tell me about it. Between him and Jason, I feel like I’m a single parent sometimes. When she said “There is an obvious disconnect between President Obama and the White House,” Rob went absolutely bananas. “Obama lives in the [expletive] White House, you dumb [expletive],” Rob shouts.
Tom: She’s obviously just going after high ratings.
Katje: And how! I hear she got them, too – nearly four million total viewers.
Tom: Yeah, with about a million in the adult twenty-five to fifty-four demographic, too.
Katje: I thought you said you didn’t watch The O’Reilly Factor.
Tom: I don’t – but I do keep track of its ratings.
Katje: Oh.
Tom: I think it was one of the Fox executives who remarked that Palin has “captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum.” Now, while I wouldn’t say “everyone” is particularly accurate, Rob definitely proves Palin’s got the attention of a lot of liberals.
Katje: Liberals watching Sarah Palin is like a decapitation accident on the Beltway, Tom. You know it’s gross and disgusting, but you can’t help slowing down to take a look at it.
Tom: I think that watching a bum fight in DuPont Circle might be a better analogy for Sarah Palin, but yes, I know what you mean. There’s a morbid fascination with it. Much as your frontal lobes tell you to avert your eyes, your limbic system makes you stare at the pathetic spectacle.
Katje: She’s also going to host Real American Stories, too.
Tom: Not all the time, I hope.
Katje: No, just occasionally.
Tom: I must say, it’s certainly ironic.
Katje: What is?
Tom: That Sarah Palin is now officially a member of the mainstream media. As I recall, her book says television is… how did she put it? Ah yes, now I remember – “worthless as a source of factual information anymore.” Quite a way with words she has, isn’t it?
Katje: I guess so. Look, Tom, Rob’s your brother, you two grew up together; you know him even better than I do. How the hell am I going to make him stop fixating on Sarah Palin?
Tom: You can’t.
Katje: What do you mean, I can’t?
Tom: If you try to force him to stop obsessing on Palin, that will only make it worse. You’ve got to push the other way, instead.
Katje: How?
Tom: Well, you’re both Internet geeks, so I’d say, start a Web site dedicated to how incredibly stupid Sarah Palin is. Let Rob work out his issues with her by organizing all the material he can find proving Sarah Palin is an absolute, gibbering cretin and present it for the whole world to see. There’s so much of it, he’ll completely exhaust himself just compiling all the evidence she’s produced already. And now that she’s going to be a regular on Fox, she’s bound to provide plenty more, all of which Rob can occupy himself with until he finally gets bored with collecting and documenting the myriad idiocies of Sarah Palin.
Katje: You think that will work, then?
Tom: I’m sure it will. Remember when we were kids, and Rob got pathological about disco?
Katje: Hated it with a passion.
Tom: So I bought him a couple of Sex Pistols records for his birthday…
Katje: And then he joined a punk band and wrote a bunch of songs about how disco sucks.
Tom: And a couple of months later, he’d forgotten about disco altogether.
Katje: Hmm. Disco and Sarah Palin…
Tom: I apologize to disco, I guess.
Katje: Right; after all, it’s not really fair to compare disco to Sarah Palin. Okay, I’ll get right on it. Thanks.
Tom: Any time. ‘Bye.