Given the current economic situation, and the apparent affection that our only president has for the people who created it, and for those who, in response, would shred what's left of the social safety net, we're all going to be in the market for handy tips on new ways to feed ourselves. So, remember, class: When clubbing the halibut, make sure you club the halibut right between the eyes, so as not to bruise the meat.

This is only one of the many helpful things you can learn from Sarah Palin's Alaska, a new reality show that is something like The Beverly Hillbillies with glaciers. And, we suspect, the show is helpful in other ways as well. After all, we imagine that, in the darkened hovels in which lonely Palin enthusiasts live sexless lives replete with unacknowledged genius and Stouffer's pot pies, "clubbing the halibut" has developed rich new meaning.

It has been quite a month for our magical snowbilly princess, and that's not even mentioning the fact that her Alaska is now neck-and-neck with Mississippi as the gonorrhea capital of America. She has been twitterin' and Facebookin' her thoughts with the enthusiasm — and the intellectual rigor — of an over-caffeinated middle-schooler. On Monday, Sarah was nothing short of baffled:

And, somewhere in the Void, William Brennan blew chunks. (If you love Sarah Palin and don't know who William Brennan was, rest assured: He was an elite.)

On Thanksgiving Day, as a holiday treat for those people too socially stunted to watch the Macy's parade with their families, she took to Facebook to serve up a heapin' helpin' of tasty resentment. It seems she went on the Glenn Beck Voices in My Head Hour and referred to "our North Korean allies," which naturally reminded the country what it learned about her in 2008 — namely that, on most serious public-policy issues, she needs to be tied to the floor lest she float out the window and off to Oz. The utter unfairness of it all could not wait until the country's post-prandial bliss wore off. Why, oh, why, could The Media not "resist the temptation to turn a simple one word slip-of-the-tongue into a major political headline," especially since it occurred "during one of my seven back-to-back interviews wherein [she] was privileged to speak to the American public"? That's some first-rate halibut-clubbing right there, although she was nice enough to sign off with, "Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!"

You, too. Shine on, you crazy diamond. Let's see. Where'd we leave that tryptophan high?

At the same time, while Palin and the family were launching their reality show, her daughter was dancing in a gorilla suit on another one. She also published her latest book, America by Heart, having abandoned the original working title, Dreams from My Ghostwriter. In it, you find that American history and political philosophy have been rendered in Colorforms. Fifty years ago, John Kennedy gave a speech to some Protestant ministers in Houston that has been reckoned ever since to be a breakthrough moment in the history of religious tolerance. Not our Sarah, though. She sees the speech as Kennedy's having "seemed to run away from his religion." Later, she is deeply saddened that we, as a nation, have turned our backs on "the most remarkable level of government — the states." Ah, the states' rights crowd, standing fat and stupid in the way of American progress since 1783. Would it be putting too fine a point on things to note that every time somebody starts jabbering about the horrible federal government infringing the rights of the states, it usually means that some cornpone despot wants to steer his state back to the bad old days for a spell? Is it impolite to say that just because Sarah Palin and her ilk are so empty-headed when it comes to American history that they know naught and care less that invocations of states' rights have always accompanied the most inglorious and shameful periods of our time as a country? These are facts, established in living memory, to be looked up if anyone cares anymore. And not to be too lamestream about it, but that "remarkable level of government" is the level of government that has seen three of the past four Illinois governors hauled off to the sneezer — to say nothing of, simply, Louisiana! And this level of government was so precious to Sarah Palin that she literally "ran away" from a position to which a sovereign people had elected her in order to make money beating fish to death on television.

And we, her benumbed accessories — gurgling on our couches, sapped of our industry, our critical faculties long since outsourced — can't not watch.

If that's what we've become, then let's go ahead and hand the country over to Sarah Palin. We're not doing much with it, anyway. Right now, what's left of the national economy is lying by the side of the road being picked at by wild birds, and the people who ran it down are drunkenly swerving at top speed about twenty miles further down the road. In response, the Democratic president of the United States freezes the pay of the janitors in the Pentagon and gets ready to "reform" Social Security right into the hands of the financial-services industry, which produces nothing but fraud, misery, and unindicted co-conspirators. After almost a year of romancing insurance company sublets like Ben Nelson, ambulatory egos like Joe Lieberman, and those two faithless wenches from Maine, he manages to get Bob Dole's old health-care plan passed, only to have the Republicans beat him over the head with it. And he then concludes that the biggest mistake he's made is not giving the Republicans more of his ass to kick.

And what outrage exists is channeled into the fantastical tales from talk-radio and impotent blustering on behalf of fringe constitutionalism — a state veto over federal laws? James Madison is holding his head right now — that has little or nothing to do with the looting of the country or the abandonment of our obligation to do something concrete about any of the things that have gone so very wrong. Maybe she has the right of it. Politics is just another reality show. Government is something we watch, not something we do. So, nominate her. Elect her. Why care anymore? We'll all just be here, clubbing the halibut.

COMPLETE COVERAGE: All Things Palin on The Politics Blog >>

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