If you hold the unfathomable belief that life exists only on Earth and not on any other planet, I suggest you pay very close attention to the Sarah Palin Book and Talk-Show Tour 2009 that has been under way for several days now. I defy you to explain from where these followers of hers emerged. Yes. I know. I promised long ago that I would stop writing about her, but her most recent foray into the civilized world is unexplored territory in the realm of human experience. The question is: Do we love her or hate her? Or do we hate to love her? Or do we love to hate her? Do we care? I'm starting to believe that in some sick way I do.

As humans, we should love all other humans and we should understand that we're made up of the same basic atomic matter. We should not judge each other. We should be filled with compassion for each other. We really should turn the other cheek when we are slighted, despite the urge for revenge we might feel in our hearts. We should think it is a GOOD thing that thousands of people are gathered by candlelight around their lawn furniture and pup tents in parking lots of large discount stores throughout the cities and hamlets of this great country waiting to catch a glimpse of Sarah Palin and obtain a signed copy of Going Rogue, her memoir chronicling the trials and tribulations she has survived since being tapped last year as the vice-presidential candidate for the Republican Party. We should embrace her and listen to all that she has to say, even if it is the same thing — over and over and over and over and over.

I think it is very odd that not many people on this planet had ever heard of her before her nomination, and now people are selling their children to get a place in line to get close to her. It seems as though she appeared from out of nowhere and suddenly became the ringleader of a massive cult. She is the Lady Gaga of politics. (I guess. I still don't know who Lady Gaga is.)

Did you hear Palin's description of the similarities between Michigan and Alaska? It was something along the lines of, "We both have tha huntin' and tha fishin', ya know?" And people were screaming with ecstasy. Large groups of people. Like lemmings just before they reach the cliff overlooking the ocean. And you thought Scientology was weird. If Sarah Palin ever starts her own mega-church — which she is surely destined to do (and I'll bet you $1 million that the worship services include cheerleaders and people jumping around in tights) — she will put the Scientologists out of business. I didn't know there were so many Children of the Corn who had been awaiting her arrival on Earth.

She is made for television evangelism. And she would make way more money at that than she would in politics. She would do even better with SPSN, the Sarah Palin Shopping Network. Can you imagine how many dolls made in her likeness she could sell? Not to mention tha huntin' and tha fishin' gear. I wonder if she needs a manager.

And then, sigh, there is Levi Johnston. Levi makes me want to be one of those celebrity newspeople you see on television, the ones who make you wonder how they sleep at night knowing what they do for a living. You know, the chirpy people who talk really fast and put a lot of lilt in their voices as they yammer into the camera about the latest ... well, the latest anything. I do think Levi and Sarah both know exactly what they are doing with and to each other and the joke is on everyone else. She's raking it in by talking about tha huntin' and tha fishin', while he is fueling her fame by posing semi-naked in a magazine and refusing to have Thanksgiving dinner at her house.

But enough about Sarah Palin. I watched a few minutes of something called The American Music Awards and my focus is now on Whitney Houston. She just performed what appeared to be some sort of "I'm back!" number in a too-tight dress and, from the tone of the lyrics, she has beaten her pain. "Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, my pain is gone. It is gone, it is gone, it is gone, gone, gone, and I am back, I am back, I am back, back, back, and I am whole again, 'gain, 'gain."

Hope we don't hear this from Sarah Palin in a few years.