Tina Fey IS Sarah Palin! Again! (YouTube)

Just to be clear, Kevin Spacey can probably do a better impression of the former governor of Alaska, but it'd be so creepy.

James Lipton gets so tickled when people pretend to be other people, which is great because he literally runs an Actors Studio.

Sarah Palin won't get to talk about John McCain tonight. (Facebook)

Well, at least she can't claim it was a liberal news bias this time: Fox News contributor Sarah Palin took to Facebook today to kvetch about being bumped from the interviews (plural?) she was slated to give tonight about her BFF, John McCain. Whose birthday it is, apparently.


Okay, let's be honest: it is weird that Sarah Palin isn't going to be on Fox tonight, seeing as it's Paul Ryan's speaking engagement at the RNC. The former VP candidate weighing in on the next conservative to run for the spot?

Either way, one thing we do know is that it's not a good idea to send pouty little messages like that out on Facebook. We expect this to blow up in five ... four ... three ...

Sarah Palin

In a revelation that surely won't be pure red meat for political commentators for the next 48 hours, the Associated Press reports a fired Secret Service supervisor joked on Facebook about scoping out former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. David Randall Chaney, forced to retire by the agency earlier this week in connection with an ongoing probe into a prostitution scandal, was part of Mrs. Palin's Secret Service detail during the 2008 presidential campaign. In January 2009, Mr. Chaney, age 48, wrote the following in a comment on a Facebook photo of him accompanying Mrs. Palin: "I was really checking her out, if you know what i mean?"

Informed by Fox News of the comment, the former Alaska governor said, "Well check this out, buddy--you're fired." Mrs. Palin also termed the Secret Service/Colombian prostitution scandal as being symptomatic of "government run amok."

The Washington Post, which first reported Mr. Chaney's comment, also  noted a colorful detail outside Mr. Chaney's residence that had no relation to the former agent's Facebook comment save possibly indicating his own political sentiments:

Attempts to reach both men were unsuccessful. Calls made to Chaney's home and cellphone and to Stokes's home were not returned. No one answered the door when a reporter visited Chaney's home in Northern Virginia. Parked outside was a silver Ford pickup truck, bearing stickers with a colorful outline of Texas, Chaney's home state, and the mantra "SECEDE."

The Post went further in-depth on the embarrassing Facebook thread, relating banter between Mr. Chaney and a friend who jokingly asked if Mrs. Palin was wearing a button bearing Mr. Chaney's likeness. In response, Mr. Chaney wrote, "well if it was could you blame her, anything to satisfy a stalker."

The Colombian prostitution scandal, which occurred during President Obama's recent weekend trip to a summit in Cartagena, has embroiled members of the Secret Service and the military. So far 3 Secret Service staff have either quit, gone into forced retirement or been fired. There will likely be more firings to come.

Sarah Palin at this year's CPAC (Getty Images)

Sarah Palin has evidently been wigging out over Julianne Moore's portrayal of her in the upcoming Game Change film on HBO. The TV movie shifts the focus of the campaign book from a panorama of the 2008 election to the aftermath of candidate John McCain picking Ms. Palin as his running mate. Ms. Palin published a series of photos intended to rebut the film in a Flickr album entitled "Game Change We Can Believe In." Let it never be said that Ms. Palin wouldn't destroy the Jeopardy! "Before and After" category.

The former Governor of Alaska will have a further chance to make her voice heard, as the little-seen documentary The Undefeated is to air on ReelzChannel (the network that broadcast The Kennedys miniseries, as well as reruns of Cheers, Becker, and Third Rock From the Sun) on March 11, the night after Game Change premieres on HBO.

The Undefeated features the commentary of Andrew Breitbart, played in 14 theaters last summer, and made $100,000.

Via Politico:

Needless to say, this will be a very, very fun watch.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Bristol Palin (Getty Images)

If the light dimmed yesterday and you heard ominous rumblings in the distance, it may have been due to news that could signal at least a temporary twilight over the Palin family ascendancy: Bristol went home to mama. Erstwhile veep candidate and ex Alaska governor Sarah Palin has a baby bird back at the roost and humbly working as a receptionist in a doctor's office. The former teen mom recently told In Touch Weekly she had a revelation while in the desert (a bar) on the back of a (mechanical) bull that some people might disagree with her mother's political views. At least one guy anyway, a jerk who inexplicably chose the younger Palin's bar outing as the perfect moment to make some sort of statement. Bristol's decision may also have to do with the reality TV goose no longer dropping golden eggs--the project she began late last year with her partner from Dancing With the Stars was put on hold by BIO and recent news she wanted to take a more Kardashian-like approach to reality fame may not sit well with her mother.

While Bristol seeks enlightenment in the wilderness the Palin-viewing public will have to just wait to see if they can one day choose between Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Putting Up With the Palins.

Roger Ailes feels great! (Getty Images)

Phew. Just when you thought Roger Ailes was just a bloodless automaton who only cares about ratings and how expressive anchors can be when he mutes them on television, he opens up and shows his more sensual side.

"I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings," the Fox News president declared to the Associated Press recently. Okay, but which one of those features did you actually find sexually exciting, Mr. Ailes?

We'll never know, as that is all he says on the subject. But don't worry, TV's most infamous exec is full of fun soundbites today! Turns out that there is one blind spot in all the all-seeing eye of Sauron Roger Ailes; that would be what is happening over with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. hacking scandal in London.

"I've stayed away from this News Corp. issue because it's not a Fox News issue," he says. "I know nothing more about it than I'm reading in the press, and I don't discuss it with Rupert."

We can assume this ignorance is from considering "the press" to consist entirely of The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal.

One final fun factoid about Mr. Ailes? His doctor is a jerk.

I just went to my doctor and he said, `Other than arthritis, your chart reads like a 40-year-old's. You're old, you're fat and you're ugly, but you're not going to die from any of those things immediately.'

We've never felt much compassion for Mr. Ailes, but when a doctor calls a 71-year-old man "ugly," maybe it's time for them to switch primary health providers. After all, we bet the News Corp. exec has a great insurance plan.

Palin.

There may be worse things in life than sitting through a 90-minute movie about Sarah Palin. At the moment, I just can’t think of any.

For a shrill, obnoxious loudmouth spouting more semantic goofs in public than Mrs. Malaprop, she has mangled more facts, misquoted more people and been on the wrong side of so many things that she’s ready for a cinematic firing squad. And for a veteran documentary filmmaker with the credits of British director Nick Broomfield, I expected Sarah Palin—You Betcha! to be a hair-raising exposé. But he didn’t have to put in much overtime. All he had to do was go to Wasilla, Alaska, open his eyes and ears, and keep his cameras rolling. As her family, friends and enemies—including just about everybody she has ever worked with as mayor, governor and vice presidential nominee-—prove in every scene, Sarah Palin defines self-parody.

The result is a balanced job of reporting that drives a stake through the heart of whatever she had left of a political career. Not easy, when a subject speaks only through Facebook and Twitter. But Mr. Broomfield, who wrote and directed the film with Joan Churchill, has profiled difficult subjects before: Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, and lesbian serial killer Aileen Wuornos, for starters. This might have been his easiest job yet. She was a pistol-packin’ mama who arrived on the scene after shooting and killing animals from a helicopter just in time to wreck John McCain’s bid for the presidency (although he did plenty to make a fool of himself on his own), stuck around to drive the Tea Party to infamy, and flapped her mouth with notable quotables like “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.” It’s all in the movie. She does the work. You just shudder.

Driving the wedge even further into America’s partisan political divide, her polarizing effect has pretty much rendered Sarah Palin impotent now, even as she makes veiled giggling threats about the 2012 election. But this movie dips from the trough of her roots to discover how such a phenomenon could have happened in the first place. In Wasilla, with a population of 5,000 served by 77 churches, she was never home, but Mr. Broomfield did interview her parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, who taught her how to hunt and kill. “There’s three common questions to ask us,” says her grinning dad. “Number one—what’s her game plan? We don’t know. Number two—did we see this coming? No. The third question asked frequently is, how has it changed our lives? Well, I still drink the same cheap beer I drank 40 years ago and still run with the same derelicts.” The folksy down-home style Sarah Palin still uses to avoid discussing real issues with her fans and charm her detractors obviously begins at home, and grows instantly transparent.

In 1976 she left the Catholic church, got born again by being dipped in a lake and joined the Assembly of God. That, according to her classmates, is where the superior hunger for power began. Driven by evangelical dogma, she forced her teammates in track and basketball to pray before every game, promising them they would burn in hell if they opposed her. (Alarming footage shows her in church being saved from witchcraft.) The Rev. Howard Bess, known as “the bravest man in Wasilla” because of his constant battles with Ms. Palin’s religious fanaticism, declares, “She has no hesitancy to use violence against all who oppose her, no conscience about triggering a nuclear war. She believes she is God’s anointed one and until you understand that, you don’t understand Sarah Palin.”

Dragging those apocalyptic religious obsessions into the arena of politics, a portrait of a zealot emerges that is about as scary as it gets. Her mayoral campaign embraced the National Rifle Association, defamed the former mayor because his name was “Stein,” and fueled the firing of every department head at City Hall who disagreed with her, including the chief of police who opposed her support for concealed weapons in public places. From 1996 to 2002, she burned and destroyed every book in the public library on the subject of homosexuality under the banner “Pray Away the Gay!” According to her deputy mayor, her rabid, uncompromising hatred of abortion and homosexuality went viral with “disrespect for intelligence, scholarship, science, history and sexual and religious freedoms of every kind.” Her campaign manager when she ran for governor of Alaska presents a picture of a disconnected, gum-chewing flake who lived on her BlackBerry, busily devoting her time to getting even with all of her adversaries, including her own brother-in-law, a state trooper named Mike Wooten, for divorcing her sister. While she was governor, according to eyewitness testimonies, she almost bankrupted the state of Alaska. Vital issues like medical benefits for senior citizens, oil revenues, health insurance and environmental protection legislation all went to hell while she devoted her energy to settling personal grudges. By the time she walked off the job to run for vice president, her approval ratings were the lowest in Alaska’s history. And still she makes noises about a comeback.

In case you think Sarah Palin—You Betcha! is a hit job on an easy subject, see the movie and learn something. It’s terrifying, but in all fairness, no disgrace, no rumor of extramarital affairs in office, no broadside is explored unless it can be substantiated. No need to gild a poison lily. She didn’t know Africa was a continent. She still insists you can see Russia from Alaska. The movie has wry humor and sobering facts, but Mr. Broomfield doesn’t make anything up. By the end, the catalogue of her failures, hypocrisies and lies is still overwhelming. But despite her political irrelevance, her biggest supporter is Rupert Murdoch, who paid her a $3 million salary for Fox and a $7 million advance for her book, Going Rogue. She is currently being offered a cool million to undergo a polygraph test to disprove accusations of immorality in public office in the new Palin biography by Joe McGinnis. Ignorant, self-serving, vengeful, deeply dishonest, power-mad and pathological are just a few of the descriptions in this film, and they do not come from a bunch of sore-headed Democrats either. Both sides get a chance to cast a ballot. One long-time Palin voter says, “When she meets people, they just melt.” Oh, where have I been?

Will she ever go away? All I know is she’s not the person I want to place near the red phone that connects the Pentagon to a nuclear war. Should we worry? You betcha.

rreed@observer.com

SARAH PALIN—YOU BETCHA!

Running Time 90 minutes

Directed by Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill

Starring Sarah Palin, Nick Broomfield and John McCain

2/4

(Photo: The Daily Show)

Last night on The Daily Show, Mr. Stewart suggested that Mr. Paul gain some weight (it worked for New Jersey governor Chris Christie) or change his opinions. The media's bored with his consistency.

At the beginning of the interview, Mr. Stewart asked Mr. Paul was feeling the love from the people and he sarcastically responded, “Oh, all the time, especially the media, they really love me.”

From Jan. 1 to Aug. 14, the Texas congressman is a dominant newsmaker in only 27 campaign stories while former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is a dominant newsmaker in 85 campaign stories without even being a candidate, according to PEW Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which defines a dominant newsmaker as someone featured in at least half a story.

Mr. Stewart asked Mr. Paul why the media would ignore a candidate that ran in 2008 with a strong showing in addition to coming in a close second in the Ames Straw Poll.

“I think it’s two things,” Mr. Paul said. “I think one is, some people don’t want to hear the message ‘cause it’s a threat to them because I’m a threat to the establishment. Some, though, they just flat-out, they don’t understand what freedom is all about.”

(Photo: The Daily Show)

Noting the attention lavished upon candidates who accuse each other of “flip-flopping,” Mr. Stewart suggested that Mr. Paul dramatically change stance on some key campaign issues. Or, failing that, he should gain weight because “they all seem to love Chris Christie.” Or Mr. Paul should get a tour bus like Ms. Palin’s (left).

Nonetheless, Mr. Paul was confident.

“You don’t always have to convince immediately 51 percent,” he said. “You do need a hardcore people who understand the message.”

For the rest of the interview, go here and here.

Sarah Palin rocks the mic in Indianola, Iowa.

Former Vice Presidential candidate, Alaska governor and reality TV star Sarah Palin isn't ready to throw her name in the 2012 presidential race -- but she doesn't want to be taken out of it either. Palin continued to tease the possibility  of a White House run at a Tea Party rally in Indianola, Iowa Saturday.

Amid chants of "Run, Sarah, Run!," Palin gave a speech in which she criticized President Obama and the current slate of Republican candidates for "corporate crony capitalism."

"This is why we must remember the challenge is not simply to replace Obama in 2012. The real change is who and what we will replace him with. ... Folks, you know it's not enough to change the uniform," Palin said.

Afterwards, Palin spoke to reporters and insisted the event "was a thank-you-Tea-Party-Americans speech" rather than an official campaign event.

"I’m still not ready to make any kind of an announcement. ... I’m still trying to figure it out, if it’s the right thing to do," Palin said as she autographed a gun for an admirer.

Palin's presence on the '08 ticket and her regular participation at political events since then has encouraged rampant speculation she'll throw her hat into the ring next year. Her appearance in Iowa only adds fuel to the fire. The Hawkeye State is home to the first presidential primary, making it a favorite haunt of White House hopefuls. Palin's next speech is at a Labor Day Tea Party rally in New Hampshire, which is set to host the second primary contest.

It may be time for Palin to make a definitive announcement and stop teasing the possibility of a run as there's evidence her schtick is wearing thin on voters. A recent Fox News poll found only 25 percent of Republican voters want Palin to join the race while 71 percent would prefer she stay out of it.