"It's Just a Joke..."

"It's just a funny parody, clever Photoshopping." Repeat as necessary.

Except no matter how many times you tell yourself that this is just a joke, that Sarah Palin isn't, in fact, eye candy that neither Obama nor Joe Biden can even hope to top, you have to admit at some point that, no, this is not a fucking joke that we can afford to chuckle over before hitting our inbox's "delete" key. The original caption that came with this picture was, "Even Obama can't top this."

No, people, this is not a sick joke or a (pardon the unintentional pun) drill because the very latest national polls show McCain either dead even with Barack Obama or actually leading him, trends that began before the convention even started.

And most of the credit seems to be going to, perhaps rightly, Sarah Palin, McCain's newest squeeze. Arianna Huffington nailed it when she called Palin a "Trojan Moose" whose sole function was to distract the national media and the nation through the very novelty of her nomination from John McCain's unfitness to lead this country.

Granted, Palin's pretty in a Klondike schoolmarm sex fantasy kinda way, the kind of woman whom we could expect to quickly shed her rimless glasses and prim, proper clothes hiding a sexy thong bikini in a Sam Kinison video. She does bring a kind of repressed, rustic charm to a campaign that couldn't seem to shake that Old Man smell and a hint of backwoods glamor to a man who day by day looks more and more like the pasty-headed Grandpa in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series.

But Huffington's right. Palin's sole function is simultaneously distracting the media from focusing on how inept John McCain truly is while dodging that same media.

And if we fall for this, ladies and germs, it'll be the greatest installment in a trilogy of buttfucks courtesy of the GOP, starting with 2000 and continuing through 2004. It will be proof positive that America is the stupidest fucking nation in the galaxy, that perhaps Americans aren't so admirably suited to wield Democratic power, after all, that we honestly cannot be trusted to vote in an election with any more awareness than a narcoleptic sloth.

Because white women voters (think: Hillary's Vagisil vote), now seeing Palin are breathing a sigh of relief and saying, "Thank God! We don't have to vote for the nigger, after all."

Because we piss and moan that the last eight years have been pure poison for us, that, yes, we need to move in a new direction, to look forward to the future. Yet literally half the nation if not more thinks the future lies with a man who barely knows the Internet exists, still thinks that Czechoslovakia exists and probably thinks the USSR still exists.

The future, to these dead-enders, is a guy who thinks that corporate tax cuts are a great idea, that offshore drilling will be the panacea to all our energy problems, that cutting two trillion a year from a 3.1 trillion dollar budget is actually feasible while admitting that economics is not his strong suit (as is geopolitical theory, geography, mathematics and probably every known science).

After telling Bush and Cheney to not bother showing up, we won't be in St. Paul, they ducked the stigma of not being seen in the same state as them, reneged on their promise to receive the nomination on the Gulf Coast and had their dog and pony coronation, anyway.

It's truly pathetic watching McCain dodder on with that overly careful DT walk that comes with trying to separate himself from Bush/Cheney while not trying to alienate the dead-enders who are still loyal to them and without whose support McCain wouldn't have a slug's chance in a salt mine.

Enter Sarah Palin, a fresh blast of arctic air and the McCain campaign is saying in so many words, here's our candidate but don't look too closely at her. Write about her but don't try to talk to her. No, no, don't look too closely at McCain, either, you liberal elitists and how dare you question his and Palin's fitness to lead during the most important election of the year? What are you, a terrorist?? A misogynist?? Both?!?!

And as McCain shuffles his way to Ground Zero tomorrow to commemorate 9/11 with Barack Obama, it will not occur to many of us as he lays a wreath then makes a speech or whatever it is that Republicans do when they strain after that compassionate, common touch, that it's his predecessor's and his party's fault that 9/11 happened and that "the President's leadership" on 9/11 McCain had mentioned in his acceptance speech consisted of him sitting on a tiny chair for seven minutes, having already known about the first plane crashing into the first tower, before disappearing for the better part of the day while America burned in three places.

It's as if McCain's supporters think there's an alternate Republican Party that's actually offering alternate Republicans that are truly independent of the Bushworld that finished what al Qaeda had only started.