And you're SURE Alaska is a state?

It seems more like a gigantic movie set or backdrop for a painting of an Inuit riding a dog sled, but Alaska just keeps getting in the news more often than when it was named an honorary state, and they didn't get the joke, and started sending people to Congress and Dancing With The Stars.

Well, most anyone can get elected to Congress.  Gopher from the Love Boat, Enos from Dukes of Hazzard, Sonny Bono from Sonny and Cher, and Sonny Bono's widow: all are, or have been, members of that august body.  But Dancing With The Stars!  Oh, you must be one of the brightest luminaries in the night sky to get to trip on your light fantastic on that show, hosted by Tom Bergeron, who might just as well get his home video camera rolling and get some segments for the other show he hosts on ABC: World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer.

Which brings me to the present hubbub concerning the win this week in that dance show by Jennifer Grey.  Jennifer Grey, who stole America's hearts in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller disappeared for reasons we're just learning, showed up and won the competition even though she was dancing on a ruptured disc.  Her story of coming back from spinal injuries suffered in a car wreck and from cancer is truly inspiring, and we wish her well as she continues her comeback climb.



You know the difference between dancing and pea green paint?
ALMOST anyone can learn to dance.

 One of her opponents was teen mom Bristol Palin, daughter of comedian Sarah Palin. Showing the class, taste and sophistication that her rebarbative mother brings to everything from running for office to huntin'-and-a-fishin', Bristol said, after the final dance-off this past Monday, "We went out there. I did my best. I had fun, regardless of our low scores. It's whatever, it's up to the voters now."

Keep it classy, teen mom!

She then said "Going out there and winning this would mean a lot. It would be like a big middle finger to all the people out there who hate my mom and hate me."

So these are the people, this family, that so many people want to see in the White House? Waving their middle fingers at the world, brazenly flaunting their gaucheness?

Of course, I caught nine kinds of hell for saying something about Bristol's kid sister Willow when this happened:


When a boy named Tre said something negative about new TLC reality show "Sarah Palin's Alaska" on Facebook, Willow Palin, Sarah Palin's 16-year-old daughter, got a little riled up -- and dropped some homophobic slurs.


TMZ reports that Palin posted on Tre's wall, "Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I've seen pictures of, your disgusting ... My sister had a kid and is still hot." and "Tre stfu. Your such a f*****."

Some people are trying to tell young people, especially those being bullied and traumatized, that it gets better.  And it does, but kids, not at the hands of people who talk like this:

Big sis Bristol Palin got into the act too, writing to another user named Jon, "You'll be as successful as my baby daddy, And actually I do work my a** off. I've been a single mom for the last two years."


And Willow finished up with, "Sorry that you guys are all jealous of my families success and you guys aren't goin to go anywhere with your lives."


A source close to the family tells TMZ that Willow doesn't normally use that kind of language but she felt attacked and was just the baby bear defending mama grizzly.

Sarah, Bristol, Willow?  Will you stop with the bad grammar?  "Your" driving me crazy, and your "families" success is just a tribute to the same aspects of America that make reckless driving popular. Your homophobia is disgusting, your constant zoomorphic references to yourselves as ursine females is a little overdone now, your grammar is appalling, and from reading the snippets of the book that someone just wrote for Sarah, your grasp of history is tenuous. But it's whatever, as Bristol so elegantly puts it.

I do have to add one note.  Do not pick on the Palin Pixies for the term "stfu."  It is a completely inoffensive acronym, one that has it origins in my Baltimore boyhood, when we would wait to see our great quarterback as he finished shopping at the Acme Market on York Rd.  We would ask the people at the store where we could wait, and they said, "STFU!"

And that meant, Stand There For Unitas!

It's true, I tell you. Don't try to refudiate me.