I’ve been thinking. What if there is no such person as Sarah Palin? What if it’s been Tina Fey all along, and it’s all been nothing more than a monumental hoax perpetrated by Al Franken’s former cohorts over at "Saturday Night Live?"

What if.

The whole Sarah Palin circus is no joke, however. And while many of the pundits and political analysts are treating her as such, it would be dangerous, I believe, to dismiss her out-of-hand. It’s a hard thing to ask of anyone who has watched and listened to her, especially at length, I know; but if you can get past the farcicality of it all, that this woman would actually consider herself a serious, viable candidate for anything (or that anyone else would!), there are definitely red flags on the horizon.

My reasoning is simple (and here I’m going to paraphrase the message printed on the T-shirt I’m wearing at the moment; as written, even though true, it comes across as a bit more harsh than what I’m comfortable with) to wit: "Never underestimate the power of ‘intellectually challenged’ people in large groups."