I'm sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah. Business is not personal. Which is why, when you read this…

While the broadcast networks (even Fox) passed on the show she's mounting with "Survivor"/"Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett, it's apparently finding some traction with basic cable. Variety reports A&E and Discovery are among those bidding on the project, and "a decision could be made in the next day or two." Reports indicate the series would follow Palin… and her family as they explore the state Palin governed for 18 months.

Variety also speculates that Burnett hopes to eventually launch Palin in her own daytime talk show.

…I don't want to take this $2,300 contribution from Mark Burnett, "self employed/TV producer" from Malibu, CA to Barack Obama's presidential campaign into consideration.

Because, hey! Reality TV producer Mark Burnett is not here to make friends.

And he's also not here to not give dangerously irresponsible cult figures with whom he presumably disagrees with politically tons of additional exposure.

It's all business. And there's nothing wrong with that.

(Thanks to Michael for the heads-up.)

I would not be surprised if this also worked the other way around.

Anyway, the first rally, in Tucson, begins at noon (MST). Flashbacks commence around 12:02.

Click through the jump to continue reading this list of the ugliest politicians America has to offer.

"My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse: Believe it or not, this was in the '60s, we used to hustle over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse," Palin told the crowd.

"I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn't that kind of ironic now," Palin added.

"Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada."

Hey, man, it's not hypocrisy if it happened in the '60s.

Everybody was experimenting, right?

For example, this bit about health care reform was mostly missy, but a little hitty (especially when talking about Harry Reid's extreme lameness)…

While this trailer for the 2012 elections was all full of hits…

Earlier today, I attempted to express exactly how impressed I've been recently with Gov. Palin's tenacity at proving to America that she is a serious politician who is ready to lead this great nation.

Turns out I could have saved some time by just linking to this article comparing Palin to another equally important female role model from The A.V. Club's Amalie Gillette.

Pretty hard to figure out which is the most amazingly presidential!

Obviously, the upcoming cut-and-paste inspirational-quote-collection sequel to her current hugely popular — you know, the ghost-written personal memoir — is pretty stately. I mean, just try to imagine Thomas Jefferson without bestselling "Squab Chowder for the Revolutionary Soul." You can't. It's impossible.

And then, of course, there's the Alaska-themed reality show that the partial-term governor — who famously asked what happens when Barack Obama's "Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot" — is shopping around Little Gomorrah Hollywood. That's something that serious-minded presidential candidates do. I mean, isn't that really why people get into politics in the first place? To get their own reality show? You don't think that Rep. Flavor Flav (D-NY) served all that time chairing that House Committee on Gettin' Up (Get Get Gettin' Down!) for his health, do you?

But probably the most overtly real-deal presidential aspect of Sarah Palin is the way she conducts herself when the bright lights fade, the cameras stop rolling, and it's just Sarah and her fellow Americans (who happen to be getting showered with free gifts in an Academy Awards "celebrity gift suite")…

The Fox News contributor and one-time vice presidental hopeful showed up to Silver Spoon's Oscar Suite in West Hollywood yesterday, benefiting the Red Cross…

"They were like locusts," says one vendor at the suite, regarding Palin and her large group of hangers-on. "She showed up with like 20 people, and they immediately swarmed the place taking everything!"

Wow! Why are we even waiting for 2012?! Somebody get her the jewel-encrusted president's crown now! We need this lady ruling our country immediately!

Allow me to demonstrate…

Publisher HarperCollins announced Wednesday that the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate is working on a "celebration of American virtues and strengths." The book is currently untitled and no release date has been set.

Her new work will "include selections from classic and contemporary readings that have inspired her, as well as portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires and who embody her love of country, faith, and family," the publisher's statement reads.

[Palin] is currently "gathering ideas and identifying favorite texts and examples."

Of course, if Barack Obama got millions of dollars for "writing" a book consisting mostly of excerpts from other people's works the right would be howling about Moby Teleprompter, or whatever. But this, this is "a celebration of American virtues and strengths," including — presumably — our ability to let a failed vice-presidential candidate and .5-term governor pass herself off as a political leader.

Anyway, better clear plenty of room on your bookshelf. Sarah Palin's gathering her favorite texts, and we all know how much that lady reads.

Below, Jon praises the stand-up comedy debut of Sarah Palin.

The Daily Show airs Monday through Thursday at 11pm / 10c.

Sarah Palin was on the brand new same old brand new Tonight Show without Conan O'Brien Jay Leno last night, and it was truly a thing to behold for people who are easily impressed by what they are beholding…

You gotta give Palin credit for at least this: Those jokes are the exact same quality of shittiness as the rest of Leno's monologue, so you can't blame her for that. In fact, her delivery might have even been a little less stilted.

But let's get into details of the actual interview…

On second thought, let's not! Let's not! Please please please let's not! It's bad enough to get into the details of Jay Leno, but must we also get into the details of the female, political equivalent of Jay Leno?

Okay, let's. But just for a little bit. So, that writing on her hand thing. Turns out she learned that from her father! Aaawwww… So, that means that when mean liberals like me (and every other person who is capable of seeing the irony of writing on your hand while making fun of the president's teleprompter) laughs at her for doing it, it means we're laughing at her father. And when we laugh at her father, we are laughing at real American values. And when we laugh at real American values, we have four fingers point back at our palm on which we have written "I hate America!" (Or something. I lost track of this line of reasoning a few sentences ago.)

Then she started talking about how the Tea Party movement is so great for America without ever getting around to mentioning all the fearful racism and violent rhetoric that seems so inextricably to the heart of the movement. (I suppose she forgot.) The rest of the interview is sort of a blur because, quite frankly, I spent most of it trying to keep my hand from reaching for my computer's power cord. By the time I had it sufficiently restrained, the terrible ordeal was over.

At the very same time that Sarah Palin and Jay Leno were subjecting viewers to enhanced entertainment techniques, Mitt Romney was across the country and a few channels away chatting it up just like real human beings on The Late Show with David Letterman. However, this small clip is all that CBS saw fit to make available…

Letterman: How about that Sarah Palin? She's not ready to president, is she?
Romney's Internal Processing Unit: Initiate response Complimentary Gracious v.1.
Romney: She's terrific.

Did you see that? Wow! And that response only took a matter of 4.3 nanoseconds (I have a nano-stopwatch; it's just really hard to find). Amazing what they're doing with politicians these days.

Speaking of which, check out this amazingly candid footage of Romney prepping for his Late Show appearance…

p.s. On a somewhat relayed note, I realize that Jay Leno isn't exactly the paragon of comedic integrity, but I didn't think he had fallen to the "stealing jokes from Mitt Romney" point. Yet.

p.s.s. Romney did it better.

Well, The Huffington Post's Alex Leo got a chance to talk to Eric Cartman's parents — Trey Parker and Matt Stone — and find out what they think of all this hubbub…

"It makes perfect sense. It's the name I would use," Trey Parker said. "Our first reaction to any story is 'How do we put this into the show?' and the second reaction is 'Did Cartman do that?' because he's so real to us it's like 'I bet Cartman did that.'"

"I saw that and thought, 'Wow, Cartman did that? That's pretty cool. Sounds like something he would do,'" Matt Stone agreed.

And, while we're already kind of sorta not really on the subject, can they please let us know once and for all if they're liberals or conservatives, because I can never figure out if I'm supposed to be laughing or shaking my fist and then writing angry prose poetry in my journal…

When I asked them which group they've pissed of the most over the years, they both said "liberals." "Liberal people got mad at us for 'Team America' — that's the most I've felt it. [The movie] came out right before the Bush/Kerry election and I think we fucked up. I don't think we should've timed it that way," Matt explained. "Because it came out right before the election, liberals were waiting for it as this big anti-Bush statement, and there's plenty of stuff in there that is anti-Bush, but we never would've spent three years of our lives making a movie just to make a statement two weeks before the election. Some people felt like it was a big betrayal."…

Both men were adamant that the show has no political affiliation. "I would never want the show to be a Democrat show or Republican show, because for us the show's more important than that. It isn't for everybody else in the world, but it is for us. We don't want you to come to it thinking, 'These guys are going to bash liberals,'" Matt explained…

"Ripping on Republicans is not that fun for us only because everyone else does it," Matt explained. "It's so much more fun for us to rip on liberals only because nobody else does it, and not because we think liberals are worse than Republicans but, just because…"

"…it's like fresh snow. I mean how're you gonna rip on Sarah Palin in a new way?" Trey pointed out.

"In a new way"? Why would any of us want to rip on Sarah Palin in a new way? I already spent a long afternoon writing my Sarah Palin jokes over a year ago. I'm not about to go and start over from scratch now.

.

Watch the season premiere of South Park on Wednesday, March 17 at 10pm / 9c.

"While it has been an honor to help Gov. Palin and her family over the last few years, I am also honored to have this incredible opportunity to stay home with my precious miracle, Isabella," Stapleton told Politico.

"[She is] 2 years old, [and] I have missed significant moments in her life, but I look forward with great happiness to celebrating milestones as well as mundane moments with her as I refocus my priorities. I also look forward to seeing my saint of a husband again, too!"

In all honesty, I don't blame Stapleton. It must be tempting to move into a job which requires less cleaning up of shit.

"My personal belief is that for Governor Palin to be a successful candidate for higher office, she needs to take this charisma she has and also add to it some depth of understanding of the complexity of life that we're living in today.

"If she had the combination of that, she would be a formidable candidate."

Also, if she had wings and radiation-proof skin, she could fly up to the sun, build a palace out of molten sun materials and declare herself Queen of the Solar System. So, you know, that's also on the table.

This statement is essentially the exact same thing that every person on the left has been saying about her for the past year-and-a-half, but Bush managed to do it without using either the words "brain" or "dead."

That's diplomacy.

(via BuzzFeed)

I realize that in this sad and confusing world, everybody needs distractions and make-believe things to care about, but some really are more exhausting than others. And this one is zombifyingly exhausting (which probably actually means something if you think about it long enough).

To my mind, Gawker's Foster Kamer explained the situation best…

Like clockwork:

1. Seth MacFarlane makes "controversial" episode of thing meant to entertain with Sarah Palin joke.

2. Sarah Palin joke elicits Sarah Palin reaction on internet and TV.

3. Sarah Palin reaction elicits Seth MacFarlane reaction.

4. Separate reactions of Sarah Palin and Seth McFarlane are yielded by "controversy," producing more "controversy."

5. More "controversy" yields NYT story.

6. Family Guy gets press, Sarah Palin gets soapbox, Fox gets viewers for Palin's argument on Fox News and for Family Guy's ratings, worthy cause gets talked about more. Everybody "wins."

Wake me up when President Palin has Peter Griffin shipped off to Guantanamo Bay for re-education.

Some 31 percent of the more than 2,000 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) attendees who participated in the poll voted for the outspoken libertarian.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, John McCain's running mate in 2008, came in third with 7.0 percent, way behind former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (22 percent), who had won the CPAC poll for the last three years.

Which means that Ron Paul's fate is decided: by the time we vote in the 2012 primaries, he'll have lost the ability to blink.

Sad. But true.

My name is Andrea Fay Friedman. I was born with Down syndrome. I played the role of Ellen on the "Extra Large Medium" episode of Family Guy that was broadcast on Valentine's day. Although they gave me red hair on the show, I am really a blonde. I also wore a red wig for my role in " Smudge" but I was a blonde in "Life Goes On". I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line "I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska" was very funny. I think the word is "sarcasm."

In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.

Gov. Palin, would you care to respond?

This is the part of the movie where it smash-cuts to "Three Years Later" and we see U.S. bomber jets flying over New York City, dropping load after load of Bibles while the President sits in her Oval Office laughing hysterically.

I don't like that movie. Turn it off!

Sarah Palin and Family Guy are in the middle of a media brawl.

This is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do on this blog, but please let me explain.

A few weeks ago, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called a bunch of Democrats "fucking retarded." Unfortunately, Sarah Palin — who, in case you missed it the first million times she mentioned it, has a mentally-disabled child that she did not abort — heard about Emanuel's comment and demanded! that he be fired.

Then Rush Limbaugh used the word "retarded" about 873 times in two minutes on his show, and Sarah Palin demanded! that that was okay, because when Rush did it, it was "satire."

Now, the Fox cartoon Family Guy went made a joke about Sarah Palin's Down Syndrome baby Trig, except that they forgot the first rule of "retard jokes" (not to mention the first rule of "jokes"), and forgot to make it funny…

In the episode, a main character, Chris, dates a mentally disabled girl. While never mentioning Palin by name, the girl drew a clear comparison to her son, Trig, when she told Chris, "My dad's an accountant, and my mom's the former governor of Alaska."

Obviously, Sarah Palin — who apparently has amnesia about her "satire" rule — was quick to claim her share of the daily headlines and respond via Facebook (because that's how serious politicians communicate with the world)…

People are asking me to comment on yesterday's Fox show that felt like another kick in the gut. Bristol was one who asked what I thought of the show that mocked her baby brother, Trig (and/or others with special needs), in an episode yesterday. Instead of answering, I asked her what she thought. Here is her conscientious reply, which is a much more restrained and gracious statement than I want to make about an issue that begs the question, "when is enough, enough?":

"When you're the son or daughter of a public figure, you have to develop thick skin. My siblings and I all have that, but insults directed at our youngest brother hurt too much for us to remain silent. People with special needs face challenges that many of us will never confront, and yet they are some of the kindest and most loving people you'll ever meet. Their lives are difficult enough as it is, so why would anyone want to make their lives more difficult by mocking them? As a culture, shouldn’t we be more compassionate to innocent people — especially those who are less fortunate? Shouldn't we be willing to say that some things just are not funny? Are there any limits to what some people will do or say in regards to my little brother or others in the special needs community? If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed. All they proved is that they're heartless jerks. – Bristol Palin"

I think that Sarah Palin summed it up best when she asked "when is enough, enough?" seconds before dragging another one of her children into the controversy.

I wish I could answer that question. I truly wish I could.