An Obviously (Un)True Story that Totally Did(n’t) Happen, Or: The Only Plausible Reason Sarah Palin Said Such Stupid S*%& About the Media

September 13, 2010 in 2012 Election, health insurance weasels, Healthcare, Humor, Missoulian, Montana, Obviously High, Sarah Palin

By Duganz

I have a thing for wine. It’s not that I have good taste, because I cannot tell you the difference in grape by region or picking; I cannot describe wine by its “subtle hints of mint and apple.” No.  The thing I have for wine is that it gets me drunk.

Thus I found myself in Liquid Planet on an otherwise normal Sunday morning – before the rush – buying several bottles of wine––among them a plaintive white that upon finishing this evening I threw from my deck. When I sober up I will of course seek the remnants of the label and tell you its name, because I think it tasted okay, and it went down rather well.

Getting back on point…

I was staring at the wall-o-wine and trying to pronounce foreign words so as to later appear very worldly and interesting. This was going poorly as I couldn’t help hearing some guy explaining to some bored looking female that Arcade Fire hasn’t been good since their self-titled EP. I stared over a beer display at the bearded hipster, and tried my damnedest to make Mr. Indie Rock catch fire.

Alas, no luck.

While  attempting to use Sith-like powers, I was joined by a woman with s stunningly benign gaze, and a pair of pumps so dazzling I wondered how she could afford them.

She stared straight ahead, but even from her profile I recognized her. I started to say, “Are you…” but she cut me off with a stern four yeses, and a hell yeah. She then put out her hand for a shake, and gave me a folksy smile that said two things: “I’m yer buddy”; and “I’m less real than a cardboard cutout of me would be.”

We talked for several minutes about wine, which she knew less about than I did (though I got the feeling that ignorance was never a problem for her). She kept interrupting me and asking boilerplate questions about the economy, and death panels. All the while, usually before and after she said something, she took a nip off of what looked disturbingly like flask. This, she said, was her own special “Juice Box.” Having met plenty of politicians, I knew it was impolite to point out alcoholism.

I asked her about pinot gregio Vs. pinot noir. We were getting along splendidly, and maybe that’s why she asked for me to show her around Missoula, to show her the places where the “folks” are.

We walked along Higgins Avenue hearing several people scream expletives, which she never seemed to notice. I showed her Worden’s, and Taco del Sol. She was asked to leave the Old Post without making a scene––same at Sean Kelley’s (though not at Charlie B’s, oddly enough, where she did no fewer than four shots of So-Co and lime).

She walked from place to place at a rapid pace as if always ready for a photo spread in Runner’s World. While I am in decent health, I do suffer from asthma. After we left the Mo-Club, I could feel the intense sensation of suffocating that warns of an oncoming attack. By the time she called all the art in the Dana Gallery “garbage” (her Juice Box emptied by now), I was wheezing and felt like death. Sarah looked at me mildly concerned.

“Do you got a little breather machine?” she asked. “I don’t know how to do that CPR thing.”

I tried nodding in the affirmative that I had an inhaler and patted my 14 pockets rapidly, feeling more and more as if at 25 I am too old to wear cargo shorts. Sarah found this all very amusing, saying I looked as frazzled as this “Levi guy [she] knows” when she told him she had “the power to ruin him.”

Finally I freed the inhaler from one of my pockets and puffed twice. My lungs opened. A few tears came down my cheeks as I lay on the sidewalk thankful to be alive, thankful that I was able to––well…

“That looks like one of those Primatine Misters Things,” she said. “You should get insurance, those things could kill you.”

“I have insurance, but they won’t cover anything related to my asthma, and I cannot always afford the $55 prescription inhaler that is just wunderbar at helping me live a normal and productive life.”

“My first five years of life we spent in Skagway, Alaska, right there by Whitehorse,” she said. “Believe it or not – this was in the ‘60s – we used to hustle on over the border for health care that we would receive in Whitehorse. I remember my brother, he burned his ankle in some little kid accident thing and my parents had to put him on a train and rush him over to Whitehorse and I think, isn’t that kind of ironic now. Zooming over the border, getting health care from Canada.”

I tried to laugh, but I didn’t want to induce another attack, so Ijust smiled, and imagined how nice it would be if selfish, ignorant bastards hadn’t hijacked the healthcare debate and left people like me sprawled on the street thankful to at least have an over-the-counter poison. Sarah, as to be expected, did not offer a hand to let me up. I was okay with this as by now she was leaning against the storefront of PitaPit, holding her face in her hands, crying, and murmuring something about eating too many “caps.”

I’ve been to college, so I’ve seen some bad trips. This was definitely a bad trip. Between sobs, and moments of excitement at things like gum on the street, she asked me what time it was.

“It’s four o’clock.”

“Oh man,” she said. “You need to help me find Todd.”

“Where is he?”

“Todd? Oh…he’s in the car. You gotta help me find the car. And the hotel. I have friends there. I need to be with them, my prayer warriors.”

I called my wife for help and despite having a cold she arrived promptly, confused at why I was hanging out with Sarah Palin, and requesting that I put down some old newspaper because “If she touches the upholstery we’ll never get the smell off.”

We arrived at the Hilton Garden Inn a little late for her scheduled 4:20pm speech, which was lucky since most of the protesters had left. Sarah was delirious at this point and began chanting again and again, “The government is whick! The government is whock! THE GOVERNMENT IS WHACK!” She then made little cheering noises. My wife told me I should have left her on the street when she started doing this––just like John McCain did.

Todd was at the side entrance with some security guys. He gave me a dirty look as if it were all my fault. They rushed her in and I was told I could not enter because I’ve recently said some mean things about Teen Challenge, an organization meant for adults over 18 years old.

I went home and did my best to follow Sarah’s speech on Twitter, but it wasn’t until I read this from Missoulian editor Sherry Devlin that I realized my mistake:

Contrary to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s warning to the standing-room-only crowd at this afternoon’s Teen Challenge fundraiser in Missoula, the media did not “sneak in” to her speech. We were not there as “moles,” in her words.

Obviously the psilocybin mushrooms, and copious amounts of hard liquor had not wore off when she was put on stage to talk, which explains why she saw “moles” in the audience sending out tweets. Had she been sober I am almost certain that she would not have said those things––at least in those words. That’s why after reading that paragraph I drank the aforementioned bottle of white wine (which is named…something or other), threw it off my deck, and began composing this apology.

So, to Missoula and the talented people of the Missoulian, I apologize. I should never have taken a drunk and hallucinating Sarah Palin to her speaking engagement. That’s my bad.

And if she was somehow sober when she said those things, well, then she’s a bitter lying nag who spews lies and refuse as easy as Alex Barron crushes my hopes for a decent season. And we should all just sigh, and wonder how someone like that can exist, how someone can be such an irrational bag of lies and still grab hold of a nation’s attention when she talks about issues far too heavy for her to understand.

And then we should start planning how we beat her in 2012.