This July 4th weekend, while you were watching tofu dogs turn into giant (allegedly) edible blisters on a backyard grill in the name of America, Sarah Palin quit her job as Alaska's governor and then spent the rest of the weekend threatening to sue anyone who speculated as to her reasons for quitting, because, see, she already gave her reasons. And they were completely sound, crystal clear, and thoroughly reasonable. She had to quit because doing the job you were hired to do is taking the quitter's way out:
Life is too short to compromise time and resources… it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and "go with the flow".
Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow".
You don't want her to be a dead fish, do you? For one thing, dead fish can't use weird basketball analogies in order to justify quitting their jobs.
Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports… basketball. I use it because you're naïve if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket… and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I'm doing that – keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it's time to pass the ball – for victory.
See, the ball is like the governorship of Alaska, and like any good point guard, Sarah Palin wants to hand off that ball to one of her teammates, walk off the court, and go play on a much bigger field or maybe join drama club or something. She doesn't want to be one of the dead fish floating in the river playing basketball, because that river is really small and boring and there are so many log jams (aka reporters) trying to steal the ball (aka national security, freedom) and it doesn't matter anyway because the last time anyone had any interest in that river (aka Alaska) was when Anne Heche did that show about finding a lumberjack (aka Men In Trees), and that has nothing to do with getting the freedomball through the hoop (aka politics?).
Makes perfect sense. So, in conclusion, she's qutting because she doesn't want to take the quitter's way out, and sometimes when you're playing basketball with dead fish, you really just want to be playing badmitton with peacocks somewhere warm.
If nothing else, the decision to quit gives Palin a lot more time to work on her awkward "I'm a runner" photo portfolio.
By this time next year, she'll be able to hold three blackberries in one hand while wearing running gear and standing near a crumpled American flag.