Sarah Palin is the Nikki Blonsky of politics. Who’s Nikki Blonsky, you ask? Exactly.

This is Nikki Blonsky (I think she’s the one on the left):

She’s the scrappy youngster who was plucked out of obscurity to play the lead in the movie version of the musical Hairspray. According to her bio, she was working at Cold Stone Creamery when she found out she got the part. Also according to her bio, she has a dog named Rocky.

Was Nikki Blonsky good in the movie version of the musical Hairspray? I’m sure she was superlative. She was a fat girl plucked from obscurity playing a fat girl plucked from obscurity. And that’s exactly who Sarah Palin is: the political version of the fat girl plucked from obscurity playing a fat girl plucked from obscurity.

Which isn’t to say she’s fat. She’s kinda smoking hot. She gives librarian fetishists the world over cause for celebration. No, Sarah Palin is the Nikki Blonsky of politics because her story is 99% of the performance. All she has is her image. Now, I recognize that many Republicans feel this way about Obama, but Obama has written 2 biographies. He’s been running for president for over a year. If people don’t have a pretty good idea of who he is by now, they could use some help with their media study skills.

The big story from last week was that Palin’s “numbers” are better than McCain’s, Obama’s, or Biden’s. It’s pretty astonishing that anyone would treat this like an actual statistic. There wasn’t a huge cult movement hanging out, waiting for Palin to announce her candidacy for vice-president. She ain’t Ron Paul. Before last week, the only thing people knew of her, if they knew anything at all, was that she was the governor who used to be a beauty queen. So the “numbers” don’t have much to do with her … they have to do with the character she’s playing. But who is she, really? And who are the people that make up their minds about a candidate based on a single speech? It’s like voting for Mork from Ork without realizing he’s also Patch Adams.

We’ll see how it pans out. I would say it’s the most down-the-rabbit-hole political stunt I’ve seen pulled in my lifetime. George W. Bush was sort of in a similar situation, only instead of no one knowing anything about him, everyone knew who he was, but no one felt like exposing him. I’ve never seen a convincing argument that he fulfilled his duties for the national guard, and I’ve seen quite a few convincing arguments to the contrary. Somehow he got a free pass on this one, even though someone like me who has never done a moment of investigative reporting in his life knows the basic facts behind the case. With Palin, though, there’s not that much to investigate. They’ve created a political figure out of thin air.

Sure, she’s already had scandals … a la she voted for the Bridge to Nowhere before she voted against it, she’s giving some guff to a state trooper … but she didn’t let her daughter kill her fetus, and that’s kind of all that matters to anyone who would vote for her. (Or teach her about birth control, for that matter … I’d be really curious to know if she’s actually anti-birth control or if Levi is just too ignorant to know how to use a condom.) From what I’ve read of her (too much), she sounds like a queen bee master-manipulator masquerading as a sweet, innocent mom. I doubt anyone’s going to poke enormous holes in this persona in the next two months, so I would suggest we ignore her and concentrate on McCain. He has enough shitty political decisions in his past to choke a moose.