Sarah Palin for U.S. Poet Laureate

(A note from about a week after I posted this: the guys at Prospect magazine read it, laughed a hollow laugh, and asked for a longer, slightly different version, which you can read here...)

Well, Sarah Palin is back in Alaska, and all you can hear around these parts is the lonesome wail of the broken-hearted satirists of Europe. Come back Sarah! We love you! It's OK if you think Africa's a country! We don't mind. It's not like you were running for President of Africa. Hell, there's people over here in Europe think America's a country...

At least she's still giving interviews, to sort out these terrible misconceptions, so I can still get my regular fix. In today's one, with Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, "the Alaska governor explains what she would have discussed had she been more available to the press."

Which turns out to be stuff like - I know Africa is a continent! Embedded in sentences like this one:

"I don't know, because I remember the discussion about Africa, my concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue, as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska's investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars, I wanted to make sure that that didn't happen anymore."

I like the middle bit of that sentence the best. It has a kind of poetry. And she says "continent", just to bang it home that she knows it's a continent. Subtle, but brilliant.

Hell, it IS poetry. Read it again:

Africa, a poem by Sarah Palin

"And the relevance

To me

With that issue,

As we spoke

About Africa and some

Of the countries

There that were

Kind of the people

Succumbing to the dictators

And the corruption

Of some

Collapsed governments

On the

Continent,

The relevance

Was Alaska's"

As Kurtz should have said at the end of Heart of Darkness, "The relevance! The relevance!"

If Obama is serious about reaching out across the aisle; about ending the divisions between Republican and Democrat - between red states and blue states - between people who believe in evolution and people who believe in creation - between monkeys and humans - between literate and illiterate - if Barack Hussein Obama truly believes in Change - then he will appoint Sarah Palin as the United States' seventeenth, and greatest, Poet Laureate.