Chez Pazienza on Palin's SNL appearance:
Sarah Palin was, in a word, starstruck -- both by those around her and, yes, by herself and how far she'd come. There she was, living out her Small Town TV Reporter/Miss Alaska Pageant fantasy of being on one of the biggest entertainment stages in the country, surrounded by celebrities. And she was the hottest thing there -- the belle of the ball.
This is one of the main reasons why McCain's Palin experiment has been an epic fail. The meta-contradiction is staggeringly weird -- too weird for a Republican campaign to manage. She's a small town mayor seeking a place in The Show but she doesn't have the chops for it so she embraces a small town hoople persona which lowers the bar, yet she wears $150,000 designer clothing and seeks the second highest office in the land while being coached by elitists on how to act more folksy than she really is.
As Chez mentions, Charlie Kaufman -- the master of twisted, non-linear narratives -- would have a nervous breakdown keeping that train on the rails.