Everyone is treating Sarah Palin like a vapid celebrity and it is just so patronizing! Here she is, four thousand four hundred miles away from her tanning bed, meeting all these important people with accents in her very most distinguished Nancy Pelosi outfits and president of Pakistan tells her she is "more gorgeous" than he expected her to be! Gossip columnist "nearly lunged" to check out the label on her jacket at a fancy dinner the other night. So sexist, right! And it gets soooooo much more offensive!Mainstream media outlets - and our very own Richard! - have dipped into the market for Palin family fan fiction. Two weeks ago this market seemed the exclusive domain of independent satirists like Something Awful - which portrayed a young Levi Johnston as harboring an elaborate Sarah Palin wet nurse fantasy - and Jeff Johnson's blog, which imagined Todd Palin as the type of dude for whom "whiskey makes him more sober." Well this week New York's blog went there, inspired by the Sarah Palin's real-life, closed-to-the-press meeting with Henry Kissinger:

Kissinger: Zen I am very interested in vat you think of my legacy of realpolitik. Palin: In what respect? Kissinger: Vell, vat do you interpret it to be? Palin: You mean your worldview? I think when someone like you says "Real Politics," you mean a clear, honest effort to rid the world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell-bent in destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made, and with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better. Kissinger: I see. Can you get that bowl of vater for my dog, please? Palin: Oh, I thought I just explained. I'm not a concierge - I'm Sarah Palin, I'm the woman John McCain selected as his vice-presidential running mate. Kissinger: I know. Palin: Oh! Sure, okay. So, you're German, right? I've been to Germany! Kissinger: I am American. Palin: Then why do you talk that way? You don't even say the "s" at the end of "politics."

L-U-L! But ugh, now the conservative establishment kind of has a point about lobbing whole "sexism" charge whenever the media makes a funny, right? Well, here's today's briefing from the Oracle of our Great Nation of Wasillas herself Peggy Noonan.

As for Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign continues to make mistakes. They don't seem to understand her strengths and weaknesses. The U.N. photo-ops were a staged embarrassment. Keeping the press away made her look infantilized. When she finally began to sit for television interviews, the atmosphere was heightened, every misstep magnified. With Katie Couric she seemed rattled. In the Charlie Gibson interview it was not good when she sounded chirpy discussing possible war with Russia. One should not chirp about such things. Or one wouldn't if one knew the implications. And knowing the implications is part of what we hire leaders for.

Okay, well, it's not like anyone really believed anything other than Peggy is an elitist liberal double agent of the chattering classes. But surely the prolific feminazis over at the National Review's Corner blog are national guarding their their favorite pitbull, right? Here's Palin fangirl Kathleen Parker today:

Circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick - what a difference a financial crisis makes - and a more complicated picture has emerged. … Palin didn't make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it. It was fun while it lasted. Palin's recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I've been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I've also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there's not much content there. Here's but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: "Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we're talking about today. And that's something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this." When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama's numbers, Palin blustered wordily: "I'm not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who's more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who's actually done it?" If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.

HOLY SHIT. So folks, there you have it: Sarah Palin is officially too much of a joke for conservatives with brains to have to pretend isn't a joke anymore. For this Noonan blames McCain's disregard of the Conservative Thinkosphere, but I actually think it's more like the subsector of conservatives that occasionally commits the gaffe of independent nonpartisan thought, which is something it turns out women - just not Sarah Palin - are capable of. Perhaps the continuing chaos on Wall Street, as notably communicated and commented upon to America by such gorgeous broads as Erin Burnett, Nancy Pelosi, Becky Quick and Maria Bartiromo, has reminded "Main Street" that the presence of lipstick doesn't necessitate being graded on a curve. But if they didn't get the message, Katie Couric sure hammered it home.