Plenty of far more important political commentators than I have taken Sarah Palin, who served as governor of Alaska for nearly her whole term, to task for launching a new reality TV show after dedicating a considerable part of her lively and apparently ceaseless candidacy denouncing Hollywood, as well as Big Hollywood, Elite Hollywood, Talking Cartoon Baby Hollywood, Hollywood, Fla., for some reason, several of the Hollywood Squares, "Doc Hollywood," Public Enemy's "Burn Hollywood Burn" and, of course, Hulk Hogan's phase as nefarious heel Hollywood Hogan, whom, you will remember from her 2008 address to the Republican National Convention, she found his "most shameful behavior since accidentally eliminating Randy 'Macho Man' Savage from the 1989 Royal Rumble, thus setting the stage for the inevitable explosion of the MegaPowers." (You'll remember that caused then-Secretary of State James Baker to, in a fit of rage, fire a bullet through the window of the attorney general's office.)
Because what, these brain-dead hippies ask out of their deep hatred of America, personal choice and fawns, could possibly be more blatantly hypocritical than building your brand by fighting the gross moral and ethical excesses of a drug-and-Michael-Bay-fueled entertainment industry than by vaulting yourself directly into the clammiest, most unswept corners of that very same industry, going so far as to do so with reality MegaPower Mark Burnett, who has brought to America not only "Survivor" (which just launched its 255th season), but also "The Apprentice," "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?," "Pirate Master," "My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad," "Amne$ia," and not one but the three last installments of the highly sinful MTV Movie Awards?
Well, these people are idiots and also aspiring death panel clerks, because those who would denounce Gov. Until She Gets Tired Or Moneyless Palin's calculated entrance into reality would have to be elitist French people who live in Norway and drink chai lattes out of shiny mugs made of runaway government and gayness, because Palin's show is going to be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than other reality programs.
To begin with, the show, tentatively called "Sarah Palin's Alaska" (because "Deadliest Catch" was already taken) is a DOCUMENTARY SERIES and not a reality show, despite the Burnett thing. This makes it OK for two reasons: 1. Burnett produced "The Pirate Master," which gives him a pass, because pirates are awesome. And 2. Palin's show isn't going on some shady, fly-by-night cable enterprise like Oxygen or MSNBC, it is going onto TLC, the stout-hearted, eagle-breeding network that brings you only shows about real, validated Americans, as long as they cannot bring themselves to stop producing children and at least one of them is named Jim Bob. (They also have 35 shows set in tattoo parlors.)
Entertainingly, the show's launch was announced by Discovery Communications chief operating office Peter Liguori who, and here's the funny part, used to be CEO of Fox Entertainment, which produces "Family Guy," the uncancellable animated show that made the Palin joke that caused her to go most recently full-bore on the anti-entertainment industry thing! Small world, this big Hollywood.
(Here I would normally make further points regarding the entrance of Bristol Palin into the TV via her forthcoming role on the ABC show "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," but that would be making fun of Bristol Palin, which has been proven to be an act nearly as anti-American as loathing Darryl Worley and offering federal health care to seniors. Incidentally, when you Google "guy who sang 'Have You Forgotten'" because you have quite literally forgotten, you learn that it's Darryl Worley and that Darryl Worley posted for Playgirl in 2007, almost certainly for the purposes of luring Osama Bin Laden out of his cave using only his glistening pectorals).
Anyway, why a reality show now, you might be asking? The Occasional Governor is doing this for two reasons: 1. The show will earn around $1 million per episode, according to Hollywood trade publications, and that's money that will accelerate the amount of time she can spend talking to Real America, especially the parts of it that doesn't have a job because it's not on a reality show. 2. She can use the money to save John McCain, who is going to lose his Senate seat in Arizona because he is not Sarah Palin, and has no reality show, until he loses his Senate seat in Arizona, after which it'll be about nine minutes before he gets a tattoo on a reality show on TLC. And 3. When you spend years mocking the runaway celebrity of your presidential rival, what better way is there to make your point than to become a runaway celebrity?
The tragedy of all this, of course, is that a legitimate Burnett-produced show actually featuring Palin and her running hotness, her moose-filleting husband and her rock-star ex-almost-son-in-law with the Playgirl connections would be 10 kinds of awesome. Note that I have now included two Playgirl references in this one single column, a new indoor record for me, meaning: 1. I can begin expecting dramatically, ahem, rising Web traffic from entirely new audiences, and 2. Say what you will, but that's not something I could have accomplished writing about Nancy Pelosi.
Jeff Vrabel appeared on "Hollywood Squares" from 1971-1973. He can be reached at http://jeffvrabel.com and followed at http://twitter.com/jeffvrabel.com.
