Thanks, But No Thanks

27 September 2008 | 11:35 PM

Irrespective of your political stripes, my guess is the phrase “Sarah Palin in a swimsuit” probably gives you at least a second or two of pause. Let’s face it, while I hate her politics and don’t find her terribly attractive (which is compounded by the rage which wells up within me when I hear people say that she closely resembles Tina Fey), even a bed-wetting, tree-hugging, intern-schtupping liberal like me has to admit that she’s a lot easier on the eyes than Dick Cheney. Or Joe Biden, for that matter. The fact is Governor Palin is certainly the nation’s VPILF -the “F” in this case stands either for “Fuck” or “Forget”, depending on your party affiliation – and there’s no denying it.

However, upon seeing this found footage of her portion of the swimsuit competition in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant, I have to admit I’m now underwhelmed about much more than merely her stance on charging victims for their rape kits or the fact that she wouldn’t know the “Bush Doctrine” if it took her out for a snowmobile ride, grilled her a slab of moose-meat and then gave her a fresh litter of children. I mean, I realize that this was 1984, and Alaska for god’s sake, and that the footage is grainy and all: even so, there was a well-established standard of swimsuit beauty for the era (see here and here) and, lemme tell you, the future Mrs.-Thanks-But-No-Thanks simply did not measure up to it. Perhaps that’s why she lost? Eh, I still think it was her question-answering skills.

In any case, this certainly moves her down the ladder quite a bit in my historically hot list of American politicians. Right now, I’ve pushed her back to 578th, just above Mary Todd Lincoln and just below Grover Cleveland.

Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent