Dog/God: Welcome to the Palindrome

I have a degree in Russian language and literature, and I'm wondering if that is enough to qualify me as a future vice presidential candidate.

I also have another important qualification: Some say I'm a hot chick.

I now live in Florida, which is pretty close to Cuba, which was a hot mess during the missile crisis.

I used to live in San Francisco, whose populace contains a fair number of Russian immigrants.

I make a mean borscht. If you ask nicely, I will let you play with my matushka dolls, the smallest of which is Ivan the Terrible. He's barely half an inch tall. Poor, ineffective Nicholas is largest, at five inches. Ivan can still kick the shit out of him.

I've had a U. S. passport for longer than one year.

I am thinking that Sarah Palin's lifelong membership in the NRA qualifies her to take aim at Russia. And maybe fire.

That's the way things are going, kiddies.

The story of Sarah Palin is not so simple as it appears. It is, in reality, full of plot. Written and directed by the Right Wing, it has currently ousted The Dark Knight in box-office receipts.

It's a love story, you see. We're suckers for this type of romance, sitting on our sofas weeping real tears into our tubs of Cherry Garcia. This is not, despite arguments to the contrary, a comedy. For instance, Ms. Palin's inability to differentiate between a Shiite and a Sunni is not funny. Au contraire, it's a romance that we're having. We haven't had one of these since the JFK days, and isn't it fun?

See, children, Ms. Palin isn't running on a ticket against Barack Obama. She's running against good old G. W. himself. Our current president is the least sensual since that uptight Millard Fillmore, so who can blame us for wanting to sex things up every once in a while?

What Ms. Palin doesn't bring to the political table isn't important; she is, after all, meant as an amuse-bouche and little more. What Ms. Palin does bring is some certainty that somewhere along the line the romance will go bust, just as it does in Hollywood. The best love stories are written this way, with frailty: Consider Casablanca.

Such a failure is ensured to occur should Mr. McCain die in office; right there is a major interleaving. Along with this is the fact that Ms. Palin doesn't seem to have much of a past; she is as much of a mystery to us as she was to the Miss America pageant. She is a classic film noir heroine, albeit one without a tremendous amount of style.

All beginning scriptwriters will tell you that the basic romantic plot must involve obstacle and thwarting, which is where Barack Obama comes in. He and only he stands in the way of America's great romance. Unlike the heroines of the great love stories, however, Ms. Palin will not step aside if the idea of losing becomes untenable; she is a soi-disant "pitbull with lipstick," the ugliest and most imaginable analogy ever.

Let's remember that romance is inseparable from tragedy. As Ms. Palin woos America and Charles Gibson, her origins obscured but her desires direct, we can only look to the Hollywood love scene to determine whether to smack Ms. Palin's mug with half a grapefruit or to take her straight to bed. In either case, painful.