I am – Hercules!!
Mere weeks after dozens of Sarah Palin supporters gathered outside the Ed Sullivan Theater to call for David Letterman’s resignation as host of CBS’ “The Late Show,” it’s Palin who has ended up resigning, announcing Friday she’s ending her stint as Alaska governor just two and a half years into her first term.
The AP speculates that the resignation may have been precipitated by an interest in a 2012 presidential run, but my guess is the GOP would sooner nominate Rush Limbaugh or that Joe The Plumber guy. Many believe Palin’s blank stares during interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson cost running mate John McCain the 2008 election:
After her snowmobile-racer husband Todd alleged that Letterman had taken to joking about the rape of 14-year-old daughter Willow Palin, I’m not sure Sarah Palin could snag a major-party nomination for Wasilla comptroller. I put it to my fellow Republicans in talkback: How many of you would seek the nomination of Palin over Tim Pawlenty or Jeb Bush at this point?
My guess is Sarah Palin is quitting Alaska because FoxNews wants to put her to work – presumably bitching about how slowly the new president is digging us out of this incredible hole we’re all in – while her 45-year-old kisser is a bit more camera-friendly. Had she served out her full first term ending December 2010, a slightly more wrinkly Palin might have had to settle for a (presumably lower-paying) Republican radio show.
Again, this is just my speculation; there have been zero announcements of Palin joining FoxNews alongside the likes of fellow former government employees Oliver North and Karl Rove, but: I predict we’ll be hearing an announcement sooner rather than later.
Letterman, meanwhile, so far gets to keep his network TV job. (The Palin fracas actually brought a nice boost his ratings.) If the veteran talk show host has suddenly taken to making jokes about raping underage teens, you’d hope such incidents would have popped up on YouTube by now -- yet I've found curiously little along these lines. Here, for an example, is a recent Letterman interview with a 14-year-old girl; note that, even as he scores laughs at his own expense, he fails to wedge in a gag about raping her:
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Season Eight: Volume Five.
