Max Weinberg, Conan O'Brien, and Sarah Palin

Once again, Late Night with Conan O'Brien included a bit about Sarah Palin.

It's an obsession. It's like a sickness.

Tuesday night, Max Weinberg made a statement in favor of Palin.

O'BRIEN: I want to mention something. We've been talking on this show a bit recently, as has everybody in America, about the presidential elections. It seems to dominate, you know, people's thinking these days. And I've noticed something... Ever since McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, have you noticed this? A lot of celebrities have come out and they've criticized Palin publicly.

And it's a pretty long list actually... Matt Damon's made a statement. Lindsay Lohan, Margaret Cho, Meg Ryan, Chase Crawford, Rosie O'Donnell, Jada Pinkett-Smith... They've all come out and criticized Sarah Palin just in the past week alone.

WEINBERG: Uh... Conan, if you don't mind, I'd like to offer my thoughts on Sarah Palin as well.

O'BRIEN: Alright. OK. Cool. I guess that's great. Go ahead, Max.

WEINBERG: Thank you. Listen, fellow celebrities: Leave Sarah Palin alone. Sure, she may be unfit for the job of vice president and inexperienced with most national policy issues, but she's a pretty lady with sex appeal. And that doesn't come along very often in American politics.

Just look who we have to stare at when we pick "qualified" women for public office: Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, Janet Reno, Madeleine Albright, Harriet Myers... The list, and the horror, goes on...

Sarah Palin presents our country with a once in a lifetime chance to put a hot woman in public office. And I'll be damned if a bunch of over-hyped celebutards is going to ruin it for the rest of us.

(The American flag unfurls behind Weinberg, dramatic lighting. "America, the Beautiful" plays.)

Our boys, our brave soldiers died at Bunker Hill so that we could celebrate the unwritten rule of valuing a woman's good looks over God, country, and family.

The America I know wins by judging a book by its cover, not reading the inside like some communist.

Celebrities should stick to what they're good at: making vapid Hollywood tripe. And let voters like me focus on putting tappable ass back into the halls of Washington.

That's right. And may I say, Goodnight and God Bless America.

The audience laughed.

Some lines are funny, but overall, it's just offensive.

Weinberg's lines not only were a series of demeaning shots at Palin, such as her being "unfit for the job of vice president" and "inexperienced with most national policy issues," but they were degrading to women in general.

"Tappable ass"?

That's too much. That's over the line.

Sarah Palin deserves at least a modicum of respect.

She's the governor of Alaska. She's an accomplished woman. She doesn't deserve to be treated like this.

It's disgraceful.

What really makes me sick is that women are joining in the Palin bash fest.

I don't see how they can be comfortable objectifying her like this. How, in good conscience, can they belittle and beat up on Palin so mercilessly?

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A couple examples of women dissing Palin:

FLAT ROCK, Michigan (CNN) -- Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been saving their fire on the stump for McCain and all but ignoring Sarah Palin. But a nervous supporter who introduced Biden in Flat Rock didn’t have any qualms about jabbing the Alaska governor.

“Barack Obama has made an intelligent choice for the vice presidency,” said Barbara Theaker from the podium, “How so very different this is from that bucket of fluff that the Republican candidates have chosen for the same position.”

Biden smiled and moved towards the edge of the stage feigning an attempt at escape but came back, taking the mic a few minutes later. “I’ll tell you what, you are good,” Biden said. “My lord, all I need is ten of you in America and this is a walk home.”

Barbara Theaker's personal attack is inexcusable. Then Biden makes it worse!

He compliments her slop and wishes there were more people like her, willing to call Palin "that bucket of fluff." Really awful.

Theaker and Biden's little exchange seems mild compared to Cintra Wilson's column for Salon. It's almost surreal in its foul criticism of Palin.

Sarah Palin may be a lady, but she ain't no woman.

I confess, it was pretty riveting when John McCain trotted out Sarah Palin for the first time. Like many people, I thought, "Damn, a hyperconservative, fuckable, Type A, antiabortion, Christian Stepford wife in a 'sexy librarian' costume -- as a vice president? That's a brilliant stroke of horrifyingly cynical pandering to the Christian right. Karl Rove must be behind it."

Palin may have been a boost of political Viagra for the limp, bloodless GOP (and according to an ABC/Washington Post poll she has created a boost in McCain's standing among white women to a 53 over Obama's 41). But ideologically, she is their hardcore pornographic centerfold spread, revealing the ugliest underside of Republican ambitions -- their insanely zealous and cynical drive to win power by any means necessary, even at the cost of actual leadership.

Sarah Palin is a bit comical, like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms. What her Down syndrome baby and pregnant teenage daughter unequivocally prove, however, is that her most beloved child is the antiabortion platform that ensures her own political ambitions with the conservative right. The throat she's so hot to cut is that of all American women.

I don't want Sarah Palin being the representative leader and custodian of my rights, my Constitution and my country any more than I want polygamist compound leader Warren Jeffs baby-sitting for my preteen goddaughters.

As a woman who does not believe what Palin believes, the thought of such an opportunistic anti-female in the White House -- in the Cheney chair, no less -- is akin to ideological brain rape. What this Republican blowup doll does with her own insides in accord with her own faith is her business. But, like the worst and most terrifying of religious extremists, she seems very comfortable with the idea of imposing her own views on everyone else.

I did not think that women being downgraded to second-class, three-holed chattel would be a pressing concern in my lifetime. I thought it was like polio, or witch burning -- an inhumane error that had already been corrected. But after eight years of Republican hegemony, and now the potential ascendance of this sheep in ewe's clothing, I am so mortally offended I feel like it is really time for women to be angry, hardcore and disgusted again. Not just with old white Christian patriarchs and their hopelessly calcified, religiously condoned misogyny, but also with the self-abnegating, submissive female Uncle Tommies whose ambitions and eagerness to please the powerful males of their tribe are so desperate that they would sell out their sovereignty over their own bodies. And yours too.

That's shocking to me. It's sick.

Sarah Palin does not deserve this.
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More Palin mocking, from Conan O'Brien, Wednesday September 17, 2008.