Dave's Fiction Warehouse

S arah Palin has come out of seclusion to demand that President Obama be impeached .  Obama should take some comfort from that, since Palin's support on any issue, historically, has been a pretty sure sign that the opposite will happen.  Part of me wants to believe that Palin's "blistering op-ed" on Breitbart was written  by someone else, since she rarely communicates in complete sentences. But her lede (journalism lingo there) makes me think she wrote at least this much: "Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, 'no mas.'" Here we have three distinct metaphors in one sentence: the overburdened camel, the abusive husband, and welterweight boxer Roberto Duran. A hat trick! Too bad it won't all fit on a bumper sticker. She also includes herself among "we average Americans" and derides the president's "friendly wealthy bipartisan eli...

I have two rules in life: I never order the shrimp special and I never buy books written by former governors who would like to be president. So it's not really an ideological statement to say that I won't be standing in line tomorrow for a copy of "Going Rogue: An American Life." That Sarah Palin remains pretty easy on the eyes, but at this point I feel I know everything I want to know about her. Maybe a little more. In the parlance of our times, it's getting late in the day and it's time to move on, Sarah Palin-wise. But every time such a book comes out, I always wonder: Who buys stuff like this? Who are these millions of people who immediately spring for the hardcover and propel it to the top of the New York Times nonfiction list?  What do they hope to learn from people like Newt Gingrich and Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck and Al Gore and Kate Gosselin? Do they not know that if they just wait a few months, they can acquire these tomes, unopened, for about ...

Think of the stupidest thing you ever said. Now think if that stupid thing had been captured on video and replayed about a thousand times a day, usually to the sarcastic asides of late-night comedy hosts. Sarah Palin may botch tonight's debate too, but I'll give her credit for just showing up. It can't be pleasant, going from powerful woman to punchline in the space of a couple of weeks. I'm not sure I'll be able to watch this debate. I hate seeing people humiliate themselves, even if they should have known what they were getting into. Gov. Palin never came off as one of those pompous, bombastic poseurs who cry out for a pie in the face and a kick in the ass. She's just a happy woman who always got by on a smile and a cheerful stubbornness about having her way. She thought it was enough to know a thing or two about cracking the whip. Who knew they were going to get all specific? This has been a terrible presidential campaign, not so much vicious as utterly vapid...

American political campaigns are all about celebrity. The essential objective is to become more famous than one's opponent in a short amount of time. You do this with sly commercials, and pithy put-downs, and three-word mantras chanted by supporters, and, if you're lucky, by sheer personal attractiveness. That's why I first thought the not-so-attractive John McCain had made a shrewd choice by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate: She's a great-looking woman with a wonderful smile. And if there's a single tenet upon which all Americans can agree, it's that great-looking people rule, particularly if they smile wonderfully. But there's another tenet: Smart-sounding people also rule. Sometimes they rule even more -- say, after eight years of a president who has trouble putting a sentence together. Barack Obama's defining advantage has always been that he sounds very smart, even when his oratory soars into ephemeral realms and does not quite cohere. Hey, a...