Clip Number Ten: In Which It Is Revealed that Our Heroine Is a Delicate Flower, Held Against Her Will by Her Guardian’s Boorish Minions

(Sorry for the low quality. The Huffington Post has a better clip, but you can’t embed it. Thanks You Tube for liberating the video for the masses.)

BOTTOM LINE: Palmer Cortlandt is holding Erica Kane hostage SO SHE DOESN’T WILT UNDER THE BRIGHT LIGHTS! WTF? Has anyone every seen Susan Lucci? She lost the Daytime Emmy how many times? Did she ever stop rocking the shoulder pads?

Is Palmer poisoning Erica? Is he in love with her? Is Henry Kissinger a cross-over guest from General Hospital? Is he going to turn on the snow machine?

Ladies and gentlemen, the vanguard of the MSM just picked up the remote.

Clip Number Eight: In Which a Familiar Handsome Stranger Returns to Town:

But wait, there’s more!

Clip Number Nine: In Which the Past of the Handsome Stranger Is Rediscovered (As Is His Debt to Salesmen, Barkers, and Robert Prestons of Yore)*:

Thanks to the Daily Dish for keeping me from thinking I am Legend here.

Worried about the Vice Presidential debate? Afraid there’s no cure for the ill that ails you? Ladies and gentlemen, look no further. Watch for the Familiar Stranger on a website near you.

*Seriously, don’t you hope Joe Biden will have some sort of tonic for us to buy next week? One that will make us immune to the debilitating effects of Palinmania and Grandpa McAngrypants Mid-Range Onset Alzheimers Syndrome? I know I’d order a case from this guy. Now it’s back to the shelter and over to HQ. (As long as I don’t have to pull a Norma Rae over there. Life does seem to be turning into a movie around here, doesn’t it?)

Today, on All My (Grand)Children:

Clip Number Seven: In Which Our Heroine Demonstrates Her Debt to Borscht Belt Comedians

Clip Number Three: In Which the Existence of an Evil Twin is Revealed (and Pheobe Tyler Makes Her First Appearance in the Story)

I’m a little worried about how Tina Fey must be feeling. Hey you Another World fans out there, are you sensing a little Vicky-Marley thing going on? And that would mean Anne Heche will soon be in the house. Then we’ll be in for a bit of TROUBLE.

Just for today, I am grateful that

1. I am not married to Todd Palin.
2. I don’t have to hang out with John McCain.
3. I am not worried about Cindy McCain trying to frame me for some crime I didn’t commit or stealing my child/grandchild or hitting me “by mistake” with that crazy hot pink cast.
4. I don’t have to learn everything about all the things I’m not that interested in and then try to recall all of it while in the company of one oddly hot senator from Delaware.
5. Tom Brokaw will never interview me, so I won’t have to keep myself from laughing about the way he talks while he’s actually talking to me.
6. Alaska has overtaken Texas as the most hated state on Daily Kos.

Anyone who’s ever watched a soap knew that the rich thin bitch wife was going to become a problem. How could she not?

Apparently, The New York Times used to watch too.

(Hey, don’t you think Cindy would have had more fashion sense than to go for a fucking hot pink cast? It looks OK in a Bollywood kind of way with this outfit, but come on. I know: Maybe she was high when they were putting it on. Oh please give me the pretty pink one, please!)

Is there anyone out there who could have predicted how completely great from the batshit crazy plotline perspective that all of this was going to be? I mean, people are not leaving their computers because they don’t want to miss the next tiny juicy tidbit.

So, ladies and gentlemen, may I please introduce you to Mudflats–your one stop blog for all Palin, all the time.

And here’s the cover of the National Enquirer that the McCain campaign is suing over:

Apparently, they’re sitting on the affair story for another week. Why does that music from “Days of Our Lives” keep playing in my head? This is so obviously an ABC 1980s storyline. I’m waiting for the multiple personality diagnosis. And the revelation that McCain is really Sarah’s father. Then Bristol and Hockey-Hair will run away and we’ll follow them all the way to Seattle. They might even meet a black person while they’re there.

Stay tuned.

Watch this. Yes, it’s edited. But it’s just too funny not to share before today’s episode of All My (Grand)Children knocks us for another loop.

I just wrote Andrew Sullivan an email with the subject “My Response to Obama’s Response on Bristol Palin.”

Andrew,

I could not agree more that Sarah Palin’s family deserves privacy and respect. Bristol Palin is a private citizen; using her as some sort of punching bag, while very tempting, is completely inappropriate (see the endless streams of comment on Daily Kos).

I also agree with Obama that today’s news about Bristol has no bearing on Palin’s performance as governor or as a potential vice president.

However, I am concerned that in issuing this statement, the Obama campaign has asked supporters to stop questioning the details of Governor Palin’s most recent delivery.  The Obama statement seems to imply that we should stop talking about Governor Palin’s family altogether. While I am more than willing to stop wondering if Bristol Palin is the mother of Trig Palin, I am not willing to stop thinking about or discussing Sarah Palin’s behavior leading up to Trig’s delivery.

Extreme risk taking is extreme risk taking, no matter where it happens.

The reason I cannot completely comply with Obama’s wishes in this matter are professional as well as personal. You see, when I am asked my profession by the countless people who call and ask for donations, my answer often catches them off guard.

I am a mother.

That’s what the Obama campaign has me down as. That’s what the DNC has me down as. The DNCC. The Texas Democratic Party. Rick Noriega for Senate. When you get money from me, you’re getting it from a mother.

Professionals have ethical codes. Doctors. Lawyers. Librarians. They all have standards of practice that they agree to uphold as members of the profession.

Now, how you raise your children is not the business of other mothers when you are upholding the standards of the profession. And the standards are relatively few and straightforward. Safety is the paramount standard. Children’s safety is the highest good of mothers. It is the greatest sadness when a mother cannot ensure her children’s safety. And it is up to others to step in when these situations arise.

The story of the day of Trig Palin’s birth is beyond belief. It is shocking. It demonstrates a recklessness so outside normal mores that many of us jumped to the far safer fable that perhaps this woman was not really pregnant rather than contemplate it. Perhaps she didn’t really give the speech and get on the plane and get in the car and then finally give birth, all the while risking infection and an airplane birth. The story that Governor Palin might be “covering” for a teenage daughter makes “sense” compared to getting on a plane and going back to the homeland. For your fifth birth. When women give birth more and more quickly with each successive birth.

I don’t doubt that Sarah Palin believed that she was doing the right thing when she got on that plane. But just because she believed it (and nothing truly terrible seems to have happened) doesn’t mean it was.  She was reckless. As a mother, I cannot be silent. There are reasons airlines require doctors’ letters for women who travel late in pregnancy. There are serious risks involved.

I believe that Sarah Palin’s behavior on April 18th should remain on the table.

The aim of the women’s movement was not to take bad mothers off the hook. It was to keep motherhood from being the only option for women, and the only role in which they could be evaluated. Just because we can evaluate Sarah Palin as a governor and a mayor does not mean that we cannot also evaluate her as a mother. I do not believe that the purpose of second wave feminism was to erase the value and importance of motherhood or “private life.” It was simply to say that that was not the only field on which women can play.

Andrew, do not back down. Keep calling for the documents. It’s more important now than it was this morning.

Lize Burr
Austin, TX

So it looks like Sarah is, in fact, the mother of little Trig. And the soon to be grandma of, let’s call him, Media Shitstorm.

Across the valley from Wasilla, the ladies and gentlemen of the Netroots Nation are slogging it out over whether or not the Palin family’s twists, turns, and labor pains are any of our business.

Any of our business!!??!!

Come on. We haven’t had it this good since the days of Tad the Cad. Mom and daughter aren’t sleeping with the same guy this time. No, they’re just back-to-back preggers. They’ll be pumping side by side at the inauguration (if Bristol’s prone to early delivery like Sarah).

Women of 1964: this is our time. This is our moment. One of our own just gave a keynote speech at the DNC. She wore a knock out dress in front of 38 million viewers. Her daughters are hogging the mike and having sleepovers with Joe Biden’s granddaughters.

Meanwhile, another of our brood is juggling the stresses of every working mom. Bridges to nowhere. Troublesome brothers-in-law. The legacy of a remote state hobbled by corruption. Giving major speeches while holding in premature high-risk infants. Her oldest daughter is pregnant but not following the Juno model. Learning what the GOP’s foreign policy actually is and hiding your reaction to it. It’s a lot of work, being Sarah Palin.

Stay tuned.