Sara(h) Smiles, Part 37: Chucks

According to WikiLeaks, on this Sunday evening’s edition of Sarah Palin’s Iowa, Sara and husband Todd and the children will help her pop — retired science teacher and track coach Chuck Heath — decorate the Christmas “tree” made of the antlers of the moose and caribou Chuck has assassinated over the years, and the spines of a couple of lamestream media types who, during the 2008 presidential election, weren’t quite as judicious as they might have been about whom they approached for interviews. At the time of “publication,” FAITP remained unable to confirm that Mr. Heath will be a contestant in the next Dancing With the Stars series, but knows for sure that he placed third in a university-wide twist contest at the University of Idaho in 1962, and is also adept at more contemporary dances, like the mashed potatoes. We have no more reason to infer that he was ever romantically linked to the recording artist most closely identified with that dance, Dee Dee Sharp, than that Jacqueline Onassis dated twist avatar Chubby Checker.

Our understanding is that Mr. Heath moved his family from Idaho up to Alaska because of his love of nature, which love most commonly takes the form of his going into the wild and killing something. A lot of people find this brand of outdoorsmanship incomprehensible or even objectionable, but if they read their Bibles, which says clearly that God gave us white people dominion over all the beasts and wildlife and so on, they would STFU, to use Willow’s increasingly famous acronym.

In any event special surprise guests on Sunday night’s SPI will apparently include Dr. Stephen Hawking, with whom the candidate will chat about quantum physics and the upcoming 27th season of American Idol, which all the Palins are known to enjoy together with big bowls of popcorn except when flamboyant homosexual contestants are singing, in which event they all hurry into husband Todd’s study for a few moments’ joint Bible study, or a “family conference.” Musically, the show will be Wayne-themed, with Fountains of Wayne, Wayne Newton, and Lil Wayne all appearing and, with any luck, “jamming” after their various individual segments. The Miami Heat’s Dwyane Wade will teach husband Todd how to shoot free throws (though not, let's hope, how to spell Dwayne!), and son Traction will do impressions of his former Army buddies, this in spite of the critics’ lukewarm reception to his earlier such impressions on the show. If a Palin is anything, it’s resolute.

I couldn’t, speaking of television, help but enjoy Internet terrorist Julian Assange’s appearances via video hookup the past two nights on Letterman and Conan. You might have imagined, in view of his imminent arrest on rape charges — in Sweden, it’s considered rape if, for instance, you don’t withdraw in humiliation if your partner asks if it’s in yet — and of the fact that many American political leaders have called for him to be hunted down like a dog (or, in Sarah’s case, like a moose or caribou) that he’d have been ill-at-ease and terse, but he turned out to be an engaging raconteur in spite of his excruciating northeastern Australian accent.

I’ve always been a sucker for such grace under fire. Long before my recent conversion to common-sense conservatism, I passionately loathed Richard Nixon, but had to admit to having been hugely impressed by his courage the day in August 1974 he left the White House for the last time. How he managed to walk to his helicopter and then wave triumphantly (too triumphantly in the circumstances!) at the press without bursting into tears of shame or rage or despair was beyond me. I actually felt sorry for the loathsome son-of-a-bitch, in a way I don’t ever picture myself feeling sorry for George W. Bush.

If you were a science teacher, and your grown daughter didn’t believe in evolution, as Sarah apparently does not, would you perhaps question your own abilities? I think I might, which isn’t to say that I hold with Darwinism, another ploy by the elitists to make the salt of earth feel stupid.

I wonder if, during his lifetime, anyone addressed Darwin as Chuck, as they do Sarah's pop. I think it would have served to make his views a lot more palatable to average Americans.