I missed Sarah Palin. I'm glad she's back. Seeing her frosted, teased coif, (albeit less brassy and pouffy than before) makes me nostalgic for the election when we were all exploding with hope and optimism and Tina Fey's hilarious Saturday Night Live sketches.
Newsweek gave us a much needed break this week from the tedium of the health care debate, Swine Flu hysteria and rocketing unemployment figures, with its cover showing a sparkling Sarah sporting shorts and running shoes. Sarah slammed the Newsweek cover as sexist. And I just wondered why she agreed to pose in short shorts, even if it was intended only for Runner's World. But for a woman who has had five kids, her legs did look great.
I think it's both curious and telling that at the same time Twilight mania sweeps the nation, Sarah Palin, voguing her rogue, kicks off her book tour turning out thousands. Is there something deeper going on in our national psyche when our fascination with sexy, blood thirsty, teenage vampires coincides with a thirst for more Sarah - herself an attractive, biting character with her own hunky squeeze and a complicated life story? To the McCain camp, Sarah has shown her fangs this week as she hits the battleground states touting her book and blasting McCain operatives for holding back the true Sarah.
The real Sarah told Oprah this week that when she was vetted, she was much more concerned about the fallout she would receive from having gotten a "D" on a college transcript than with having a pregnant teenage daughter.
But clearly now, Skin-a-Moose Sarah has found her calling and knows her audience. While the naysayers nitpick the facts of her book - a book apparently more revisionist history than historical record - the people sleeping out in Michigan for the chance to shake Sarah's hand probably don't give two hoots about all of the pesky campaign details. They see Sarah as one of them. And that's her charm.
"Michigan and Alaska have a lot in common. We love the outdoors and have lots of snow and hockey moms," Sarah told an enormous crowd waiting outside a book signing on Wednesday.
"She means what she says and says what she means," a woman told NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell as she waited hours to meet Sarah.
Many of us were never quite sure what Sarah said or exactly what she meant because an eloquent communicator she was not. But big chunks of America don't necessarily covet intellectual giants or smooth orators as much as they do God fearing, good ol' regular folk. And to them, Sarah is not just a victim but a survivor.
It is her Only-in-America, Made-for-TV storyline, where Sarah's teenage daughter gets pregnant and the baby daddy poses for Playgirl that makes her, dare we say it, relatable.
Sarah told Oprah and writes in her book, that she believes that she and Todd would have been a breath of fresh air to Washington D.C. because gosh darn it, they are the real Joe Six Packs. While many Republicans may want Sarah to just disappear and others hope that her stratospheric star continues to rise and she strengthens the base, I'm just hoping that Sarah does have coffee with Hillary as Sarah suggested. They can exchange biographies, swap campaign horror stories and chat about the surreal phenomenon that is Twilight.