Barack Obama’s ascension as the first African-American president of the United States was nothing short of extraordinary. Pumped forward by a young demographic excited about the prospect of promised change, his victory over Republican John McCain was lauded for shattering 200 years of history.
But what if it had never happened? What if early struggles had short-circuited his promising political career before it even had a chance to take off? What if a combination of shady politics, conservative baby-boomer numbers and a mental break by John McCain — who finally succumbed to the years spent as a prisoner of war — instead pushed Sarah Palin even more firmly into the spotlight to become the front runner for the Republican Party? What if the people chose Palin to become the new president of the United States? What then?
Politics, life and the world would be very different.
2008: Celebrations by right of the right pundits tout Palin’s rise to the highest office in the country as the newest breakthrough for women since 2007 when Britney Spears reminded all of us that it is perfectly normal, sane and OK for women to shave their heads, that the bald-head look can work for you too!
2009: Churches are overrun with heterosexual marriage while abortion clinics continue to shut down as their doctors and homosexual citizens begin to mysteriously disappear.
2010: In need of a new vice president after McCain, following his departure from reality, finally hermits himself in one of his eight Arizona homes, she appoints daughter Bristol to the office after the younger Palin announces her intention to major in public speaking. Not content with only a TLC reality show, the two decide that a countrywide mother/daughter/president/VP Dancing with the Stars tour is in order and take off, carrying their official duties with them on the road.
2011: Making a terrible dance duo (neither Palin can salsa to save her life), the two are finally booed off the stage and must go into hiding after passing legislation to interexchange the first and second amendments, thereby creating a “blood libel” between leftist journalists who vow to use the written word to obliterate her.
2012: Amazingly, and against all odds, Palin is reelected, running under the protection of the Tea Party, which drafted her from the Republican Party — who were more than happy to get rid of her following the infamous attempt to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2009.
2013: Sluicing off the dust from years of struggle, Matel finally pulls itself out of the rut by creating a Sarah Doll a la the Sasha and Malia Dolls. Complete with a gun, a caribou action figure and a “Don’t ya know” drawstring, the doll dispenses Palin nuggets of wisdom while the miniature gun puffs out lifelike powder each and every time a tiny “click” can be heard.
2014: On and off again Bristol and Levi unite (again) only to be broken up by Mommy who immediately whisks her daughter into a marriage with Nick Jonas because, despite the two-year age difference, Palin Sr. is attempting to appeal to a younger demographic.
2015: However, Palin’s gun obsession begins to worry her family and they put her up in the Betty Ford Clinic (which apparently hosts druggies as well as way-too-enthusiastic gun enthusiasts). However, a scuffle with Lindsay Lohan (who is now a permanent resident of the clinic) lands Palin in not-so-small claims court where she must pay Lohan the very reasonable sum of $11 million in emotional and physical damages.
2016: Completely broke, Palin takes up competitive lawnmower racing to pay off her lawsuit bills and is surprisingly well-received by her followers. Palin becomes the first president to break term limits and is elected yet again by a charged sports-fan demographic. Lawnmowers become all the rage.
2017: The United States enters a time of prosperity as lawnmowers and bump-its pull the economy out of a long-running recession.
2018: Palin announces her plan of world domination, starting with the frozen tundra to the north. American-Canadian tensions rise as Palin vows to end all exports to our northern neighbor, starting with bump-its which have become a worldwide phenomenon.
2019: Tiny Fey is hired as a body double for Palin, who travels to North Korea where she is determined to take over nuclear operations. Donning camo and her own two guns (“Alphie” and “Tiger”) she breaks into their nuclear facility, takes over operations and announces herself queen of North Korea.
2020: President/Queen Palin launches a nuclear weapon at Canada. It’s intercepted. Hillary Clinton is elected president.
Loading ...
Sounds like you are inciting violence against conservatives.
Not in the least Lone Reader, just enjoying poking some fun at Sarah Palin. I was wondering where you’d gone, it’d been pretty quiet for awhile over here.
I’m always watching
Can’t really tell for sure, but you seem to believe presidents can serve 3 terms. (From 2008 to 2020 is 12 years.)
To break term limits would require a constitutional amendment which isn’t described in your column.
Wouldn’t it be funny if President Obama (the fine-tune-your-empathy guy) during the 2008 presidential campaign (maybe in Philadelphia) had talked about bringing a gun to a knife fight. I know that would be something nobody would expect, but wouldn’t it be funny if he had actually said something like that at a fundraiser in Philly – if he’d suggested that in his struggle with republicans he’d bring a gun.
And wouldn’t it have been funny if the president’s deputy chief of staff (maybe a guy named Messina) had said at one point that if opponents hit the president on policy issues the White House would “punch back twice as hard.”
And wouldn’t it be funny if an democratic ex-representative from Pennsylvania had actually suggested last October that a republican running for governor of Florida should be shot. Especially if the ex-representative’s name was Kanjorski.
And wouldn’t it be funny if a man named Halloran who was a democrat from New Hampshire had suggested that it was too bad Palin wasn’t on a plane that crashed in Alaska killing former senator Ted Stevens.
It’s always a source of “humor” when politicians and the news media suggest violence against their opponents. And if these things had happened and been reported by such news organizations as the Wall Street Journal it would be even funnier. But we know these things must not have happened because Palin and Limbaugh are the ones being lambasted for violent talk. And Obama, Messina, Kanjorski and Halloran aren’t being mentioned. And we know the media wouldn’t ignore the president talking about bringing a gun to a fight or Messina talking about punching republicans twice as hard or Kanjorski wanting a specific republican shot or Halloran wanting Palin dead because those things would certainly seem to be violent talk if they happened. So when certain news media ignore those things, they must not have happened. Only republicans and conservatives talk about using guns and shooting adversaries. Right?
Admin: waiting for your reply to Mark B. and I am shuddering as I type this.
You forgot that the Democrats released an image almost exactly like the one Palin did, but due to the death of the Journalist’s Code of Ethics it never got published by our media.
Democrat Target Map
The media obviously believes that it’s okay for Democrats incite violence by publishing images like this or by constantly referring to Tea Partiers as terrorists, and will bend over backwards to protect their party of choice.
Allison, these types of posts are much better suited to Topix or your own personal blog than one sponsored and named after our local newspaper.
Lone Reader: I’m glad to know you’re always watching the blog.
Mark B.: Several things. Let’s start with term limits, which I understand by constitutional mandate are limited to two four-year terms, however, this is a sardonic piece examining the what ifs which is why I said, “Palin becomes the FIRST president to break term limits.” It is not meant to be taken for a dire supposition of what would have happened as I doubt Matel would have created Sarah Dolls and Palin would have taken up competitive lawnmower racing.
On another note, I must reiterate what I said before to the Lone Reader: I am not inciting violence against conservatives. Nor am I suggesting that conservatives are more violent than liberals. I merely wrote a spoof piece in which I targeted Palin’s well-known affinity for guns (a trait she seems to be proud of if you can remember her shooting a caribou during an episode of her TV show), and her famously strong stances against abortion and gay marriage.
Notice most of the piece is dedicated to pop culture references and completely nonsensical proposals (see: Dancing with the Stars countrywide tour, lawnmower racing and Queen Palin). This is not meant so much as a political commentary (though I concede that when writing about a politician some of the stances are going to come out as necessary evils), but rather a humor piece in which I used current pop culture news and references mixed with politics in an unexpected way. As I said before, I have my doubts that Palin would ever force her daughter to marry Nick Jonas, she wouldn’t get into a fight with Lindsay Lohan at the Betty Ford Clinic, and she certainly wouldn’t appoint Bristol Palin as her VP or any of the other absurd suggestions within the piece.
Yes, Palin is getting slammed by media right now, I’ll admit it, we love to hate her. She is especially controversial right now and while I’m not okaying the violent rhetoric used by Obama, Messina, Kanjorski and Halloran (which I’ll note has been covered by the media as well), this is not a piece about inciting language employed by politicians nowadays, but rather a sardonic pop culture piece. Give me some time, as the politics begin to heat up this year going into the 2012 election season, I’m sure I’ll have more (and no, it will not all be blasting Sarah Palin).
ArVet: Please enjoy the above response.
James: While I appreciate your suggestion that the type of writing I do is not well-suited to the blog named after and sponsored by the local newspaper, that the piece I spent a good two hours crafting is inappropriate for our blog, that my work is better suited for a site as ridiculous as Topix, I stand by what I wrote. It is a column, a humor piece and as this is a blog, it’s occasionally (and more so as 2012 comes around) going to get some political commentary. Blogs are opinionated beasts, it’s just in the nature of the Internet climate in the 21st century.
“The media” frequently takes lumps for incorrectly or unfairly portraying events, people, and especially, politics, but are the commentators really any better? While we’re blasted for grouping Republicans, Democrats, Tea Partiers, Green Partiers, liberals and conservatives into their own distinct categories without much consideration, commentators are the ones grouping “the media” into one large category without taking any consideration into the work each individual publication does.
So tell me this, without knowing how reporters and journalists spend each day, or understanding the kind of loving work and pride we put into every piece we write, are commentators really much better than the media they’re lambasting? We group political parties by the simplest means available to us, you say. Our response? You’re grouping us by use of a similar avenue.
We’re not writing blog entries with an attempt at being non-biased. We’re filling in the blanks on a blog that’s very lopsided and that has been for a very long time. Of course our comments are going to be just as biased as yours. They have to be to reach a balance between the two.
Blogs are not opinionated beasts in their own nature. They are a forum where a person can write whatever they want. If a blog becomes extremely biased (like this one is) it is only because the author has made it that way. While it is true that it’s near impossible to be completely non-biased and sit exactly on the 50 yard line, there is a very wide field between the two goal posts and this blog sits at the liberal’s 10 yard line. Get to the 40 and we’ll be good.
There also is a big difference between a professional journalist writing headline articles for a newspaper’s blog and an ordinary commenter. What you write reflects on the company you work for. Your blog entries can add to or take away from the credibility of the entire newspaper. Regardless of how much control the paper has given you, it still says “www.eldoradonews.com” at the top. What we write affects nobody but ourselves.
James, you are mistaken with your comments, especially the one “Your blog entries can add to or take away from the credibility of the entire newspaper.”
This sounds almost like an elementary attempt to get the attention of management, but what you fail to realize is the content of this blog is decided by the administrator of the blog.
If you really believe what you are saying, then you also believe that every opinion column in the print edition reflects on the company.
Please re-think, not re-load.
Admin – If you haven’t already, please read John McCain’s words regarding President Obama as reported by the Washington Post at the ceremony in Tuscon. There are a lot of us who think the same no matter which party affiliation. (never was good at grammar)
Thank you Sara, you said exactly what I’ve been trying to point out for the longest time — that the blog content is akin to a print editorial.
James, as Sara wrote, opinion pieces are the writer’s thoughts, not those of the entire publication. You should also know that because I’m the administrator I do decide what I post on the blog, however, I am still subject to managerial decisions in relation to the content. If you feel the need, I would encourage you to write a letter to the editor (editorial@eldoradonews.com) to express your frustrations with the blog.
ArVet, I actually did catch the piece John McCain wrote. I found it eloquent and very touching. While I think it’s going to be difficult in Congress, difficult for the media and the general public to all “get along” as the sentiment of his piece pled for, I can only hope to see work across party lines to make the necessary changes our country needs right now.
I hope many people feel the same no matter party affiliation. The above piece was meant to be comical, not an attack on conservatives as a whole, but rather a commentary about the methods through with Sarah Palin has gotten media attention.
It’s easy to tease politicians, Sara Palin just makes it much easier for us. This blog entry is purely comical and should be seen as that, not as a biased attack. Blogs are used by writers to voice their opinion and comment over matters and/or people in society.
If you are offended, STOP READING THE BLOG! Do not attack the administrator. If the newspaper did not approve of the topics at hand, pretty sure this blog’s administrator would no longer be the administrator. She is good at what she does. She has a sense of humor that isn’t hurting anyone.
To the admin.-Props to you.
Ps. I’d pay money to watch Sara Palin lawnmower race.