An Open Letter To Sarah Palin

Not pictured: Russia.

Dear Sarah,

Wow! I really can’t believe it’s come to this. Why, it feels like it was only yesterday that my father told me that McCain had picked you as his running mate, and I said, “Who the hell is that?” And then, 15 minutes later, having Googled your name, I knew. I won’t say that I was never happy again after becoming aware of your existence, but I will say that what happiness I did experience was considerably different from my pre-Palin happiness. It was duller and blander, the colors all faded – like on a Claritin commercial before the person takes Claritin. However, living with the burden of knowledge that somebody like you can come within a few million votes of being next in line for the presidency, it’s pretty irresponsible of me to experience any emotion besides abject terror at what democracy can do.

Don’t get me wrong, I see the appeal – I mean, who wouldn’t want to have Francis McDormand in Fargo as their president? The thing is, in Fargo, Francis McDormand actually knew what she was doing and exercised some respect for the law and common human decency. Also, I assume that if she were to go into labor while out of state she wouldn’t spend several hours flying back home before delivering the baby* – this, of course, is all speculative.

*Now that you’re out of politics for the moment, tell me – did you lose a bet with Ann Coulter or something? I mean, really, what was the deal there? You found out you were in labor before giving a speech in Texas, then gave the speech, flew back to Anchorage, and drove an hour to Wasilla before delivering. I mean, sure, there was a time on a band trip when I had to take a dump but waited three hours until we were back in Eugene, but that was because I knew the toilet in my apartment wouldn’t give me hepatitis, as opposed to the ones in the rest stops on I-5. Emergency rooms, on the other hand, tend to have something of a uniform quality to them.

But hey, you were a maverick. You were too much of a maverick for cornerstones of politics, like facts or logic. Hell, you were even too much of a maverick for the cornerstones of the English language. To you, complete sentences were like the glorious wildlife of Alaska – you kept your distance from them, and then shot them from a helicopter until they were slowly bleeding to death on the ground. To wit:

“Well, let's see. There's ― of course in the great history of America there have been rulings that there's never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So, you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but ―" Sarah Palin, talking about… Uh… Something.

Trying to follow the subject of one of your sentences is like one of those Family Circus cartoons where it shows the dotted line path Billy took that goes all around the neighborhood.



Recently, though, you’ve reached maverick nova status, and are now such a great and powerful maverick that you’ve slipped the surly bonds of the United States Constitution. I say this because of your recent threat to sue the media and the Internet for suggesting that the reason for your resignation might be rampant corruption and public scrutiny, as opposed to whatever nugget of clarity was hiding behind all those dropped gerunds and flimsy sports analogies you tossed out at your press conference. However, it may come as something of a shock to you to learn that, before your much beloved Second Amendment, there is another Amendment – the First. It’s my personal favorite (although I’m also a big fan of #3, wherein the government isn’t allowed to let soldiers live in my house).

But of course, we all know the real reason you resigned. It’s because you’re too much of a maverick to be tied down to some rank and file job like state governor! And, knowing that you didn’t want to come back to the job, you opted to resign – out of service to your constituency, of course. No, it’s not freeing up time to rack up some serious flow on the talk show circuit – as you said, the people of Alaska deserve a governor who wants to do the job, and for you to be occupying that position would be wasting their money. That’s a respectable position; ever the protector of public funds, you opposed pork barrel projects like the Bridge To Nowhere once you realized that people were watching. You really ought to move on to bigger and better things; sure, the people of Alaska will lose the governor who they had thought they were electing to a four year term, but that memoir ain’t gonna write itself.

I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you. Thank you for nearly a year of solid, unflinching punchlines. Every time I needed to point to something reprehensible or nauseating that was going on in the world, I only needed to look as far as you. It’s been a wild ride, hating you for so long like this, but I hope that in the private sector you continue to make an ass of yourself on a regular basis, lest I ever run out of things to write about.

Holla back,

Truman Capps
Internet Celebrity

Truman Capps wonders if he'll get sued.