My fellow Americans, when I was a young pageant hopeful in the Miss Alaska competition, I could never imagine the day when not one but TWO women would be running for the highest offices in the land during the same election cycle.  And that I would be one of them!  And to be the second-in-command behind an honorable old war veteran like John McCain during his final years!  Surprising though it may seem, the thought had never crossed my mind.  As a grateful daughter, a proud mother, and an even prouder grandmother-to-be (at the tender young age of 44 to boot!), you have no idea what this honor means to me, and womankind.  I shall do my best to uphold the values that make this country, and this political party, the greatest the world has ever seen.

Still, we women, as a gender, have a long way to go before we are to be truly taken seriously.  Women in all walks of life — not just in national politics — need to rise up and meet the lofty standards set by our honorable and righteous foremothers.  Leona Helmsley, Marge Schott, Phyllis Schafly — these are the trailblazers in whose ashes we follow, and it is their examples we must live up to.  Every move we make, every claim we stake, every breath we take happens beneath the tall shadows cast by such groundbreaking Amazons.  And it is the legacy of these brave pioneers (or, if you prefer, pioneeresses) that is being disgraced by today’s “modern woman,” especially in the public arena.  I’m speaking, of course, about a group of so-called sports reporters often referred to as “sideline hotties.”

As a former television journalist myself, it is appalling to see these so-called “women” win over audiences with their well-shaved legs and their gussied-up cleavage.  And did you know there are websites for people to just stare at pictures of these women, like they’re available for online chats?  After I found my son Track looking at one of these sites (for an essay he was researching), I could hardly believe my own eyes.  When are people going to realize that trading on your looks means that you get judged solely on your looks, and other valuable assets are left unappreciated?  Ladies, a word of advice — if you give the milk away for free, you’ll just become another cow.

I’ll admit, the fan mail I receive and the comments I see while my staff web-Googles for press clippings can be flattering, if perhaps a little too PG-13 for my particular tastes.  But I imagine that most men (and I fear some women as well) see me as just another “hot” librarian mother that they would like to get to know in a Biblical manner after a few shots of Jose Cuervo and some line dancing.  They don’t know that I minored in political science, or that I was known as “Sarah Barracuda” during my college basketball days, or that I enjoy a good moose burger now and then.  All men see is some woman in a power suit that looks like movie star Tina Fey or that woman that used to sell things for Overstock.com.  And maybe that’s good enough for some.  But not for any one that dares to consider themselves a “woman.”

And it’s bad enough that these trollops are staining our enjoyment of broadcast sports with their “human interest stories” and their “salon haircuts.”  Now I see that the queen of all these floozies — Ms. Erin Andrews (unmarried, of course) — isn’t satisfied with making important New York Yankees baseball games nearly unwatchable.  She is now using her anorexia-flavored good looks to sell shaving cream.  Soon, these talentless ignorant breast implants will be infiltrating all areas of our daily life.  When I learned that personable Good Morning America hostess Robin Roberts — a proud, civilized, and seemingly intelligent woman — used to flounce around like a drunk hooker for ESPN, I nearly choked on my post-pilates Museli!  Clearly, ESPN is just the tip of the iceberg.  If left unabated, they could become radio show hosts or newspaper columnists or movie stars.  Some of these people, heaven forbid, might even make it into public office!  We, as pure good-hearted American citizens, must do all we can to end this threat to our way of life.

Now, of course, it would be wrong of me to suggest that concerned citizens do anything rash or possibly illegal.  It would be beyond the pale to send these women death threat letters constructed from cut-out letters from various magazines.  I can’t in good conscience recommend that their Wikipedia pages are edited to include slanderous details about who or what they’ve done with various porn stars and farm animals.  To ask any hackers to perhaps reveal their Social Security numbers or steal their credit card information wouldn’t be becoming of a future Vice President.  And if anyone actually approaches one of these tarts during one of their “performances” and empties a vat of pickle juice over their pretty little airheads, it won’t be because I suggested such a course of action (and suggested you scream “sic semper tyrannis” after dumping the brine).

All I am suggesting is that, somewhere in this great continent of America, there’s a young and beautiful college graduate whose life-long dream was to be the next Brent Musberger.  And this brilliant former beauty pageant contestant is sending her audition tape to an up-and-coming sports-centric cable network, knowing full well that she is overly qualified to be that network’s best announcer and reporter.  And this bright-eyed ingenue (who actually named her first daughter after the city that houses this supposed “world wide leader,” and made sure to mention this fact in her cover letter numerous times) will have her heart broken by a rejection notice that actually has the temerity to suggest that she “try again when you have more experience, Ms. Palin” which of course is code for “you didn’t get the job because you’re too strong-willed and self-sufficient for our particular needs, and besides married women don’t give us nice boners.”

And when this now-successful woman learns that one of these bow-legged blonde twigs — a talentless mannequin who actually got the sports job this woman has always dreamed of, who’s earning the prestige and fame this woman always craved, who gets to share airtime with this woman’s personal hero (and, truth be known, grade school crush) Brent Musberger — finally gets what’s coming to her, this proud and powerful Free World co-leader will sit back in her presidential-to-be Washington office and smile.  And she will be very, very grateful.  She can’t say how grateful she might be, but she might be grateful enough to send a few Alaskan king crabs their way, if you catch her drift and provide her assistant with a mailing address and, if possible, a phone number (preferably to a disposable cell phone).

Thank you, and may God bless you all.

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin is governor of Alaska, which (as any good journalist knows) is very close to Russia, which is in Asia, which is next to Europe, which she once visited, which means that she has just as much foreign policy experience as anyone on the Democratic ticket, so there.