In an astonishing move, Senator John McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Luckily for the CT and UR as a whole, I was on hand at the Republican National Convention. Unlike its Democratic counterpart, the media room was fairly deserted throughout this four-day celebration of old white men, so our well-placed staff writer was able to secure an unfettered one-on-one interview with Sarah Barracuda herself.

Steven Burnett: Many of our readers may not know who you are due to your relative lack of national fame. Were you as surprised as we were to hear that you had been chosen for the VP position?

Sarah Palin: Well of course I was. I mean, who am I? What a curve ball! As a former sportscaster, commercial fisher and beauty pageant runner up, I never would have thought that I would be qualified for the job.

SB: So many others have thought the same thing. What assets do you feel that you bring to the ticket?

SP: Well, many would look at my many legislative accomplishments as the mayor and as a council woman for the city of Wasilla, but those are almost insignificant to the intangibles I bring to the table. An integral part of this year’s Republican strategery, as explained to me by Karl Rove during one of our frequent hypnotizing sessions, is that this year we will beat those do-gooders to the punch. While Obama may attempt to court Clinton’s key soccer mom constituency, we’ll go straight to the source and put a hockey mom on the ticket.

Plus, what do baby boomer albino hillbillies love more than civil liberties, economic welfare, sensible foreign policy or acknowledgement of climate change? I’ll tell you what: VP eye candy.

SB: As an extreme unknown quantity that is one coronary away from controlling the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world, help us to get to know you better. Do you have any special accomplishments during your various elected posts that you would like to highlight?

SP: As the mayor of a town of just over 5,000 people, I fired the librarian, museum director and sheriff because they didn’t support my policies. I stole that move from Bushie’s finagling with the Department Of Justice. I even lobbied millions of earmarks from the now indicted Ted Stevens. Most importantly, I combatted the Environmental Protection Agency from placing polar bears and beluga whales on the endangered list so that oil companies could continue to drill unmolested by conservation laws.

SB: Speaking of Dubya, how would you handle the inherited War on Terror?

SP: I’ve always been a fan of combatting terror, but I think that Dubya has focused too much on his Texas oil man upbringing. He is just scared of those Arabs always trying to steal our oil that God mistakenly put under their soil.

What we should really fight is terror itself. And by that I mean polar bears. Did you know they are the only animal that sees human being as food? My first presidential move would be a nuclear holocaust on their breeding grounds, followed by a full-scale snowmobile-led armed forces invasion to clean up any survivors.

SB: How do you express the feminist ideology that some hope you could help invoke?

SP: I really feel that my pro-gun stance and petro politics will reflect the kind of force based, do-it-alone viewpoints that I feel many women share. I mean, when has that failed us nationally?

SB: Some have said that President Bush has the intellectual capacity of a grapefruit (the dumbest of all fruits). How will you restore intellectual prestige to the White House in the tradition of such luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and Bill Clinton?

SP: Well, that is a hard question. In fact, I’m frequently confused by even the simplest of questions.

However, my time at Matanuska-Susitna College as a communications major taught me one way to answer any question, which is to lie until I’ve confused everyone including myself.

[At this point, Palin was restrained by her shadowy handlers and I was escorted outside to the sea of protestors.]

Burnett is a member of the class of 2010.



Notes by Nadia: I’m disappointed in this country

I always knew misogyny existed in our country, but I never knew it was to the extent that Americans would pick a rapist and convicted felon as president over a smart, educated, and highly qualified woman. 

Please stop messing with my pants

It started off with small things. One morning, the cuffs of my pants were slightly shorter, almost imperceptibly so.

Teddy’s Travels: Ithaca, NY

Obviously, every ‘Teddy’s Travels’ needs adventure, and after our unremarkable stay in Ithaca, I began to wonder if perhaps we would break the streak.