Make it Stop

So I left Alaska about a month ago to embark upon a violent, multi-time zone bender a prolonged vacation, happy in the knowledge that the de-Palinization of the state would be more or less complete when I returned. Between blackouts stays with various wings of the family, I avoided most news sources, with the exception perhaps of a few unendurable moments of Wolf Blitzer that I accidentally watched while trying to find Man v. Food. Had it not been for the impending arrival of the Farley Heiresses, I would have avoided the internet completely during that time. So while I’m told that a significant fraction of the news media felt compelled for some reason to continue talking about Sarah Palin, my life has been comfortably unperturbed for the past four weeks; I didn’t even bother to read her farewell address, though about a thousand people e-mailed me with links to William Shatner’s brilliant rendition of a speech that I imagine was composed between huffs of gold spraypaint.

All of this I mention only to try to remind myself why an attitude of Zen-like detachment is vastly preferable to caring about stories like this, which — like nearly everything regarding the Palins’ private lives — is plausible enough, but holy shit, why bother anymore? I mean, there’s a guy on the teevee who eats chocolate-covered bacon and hamburgers pinned between grilled cheese sandwiches, and yet some people would rather talk about the former governor of Alaska. Weird.