News happens so fast these days

It was about noon yesterday. We had just gotten back from walking and I went straight to the kitchen to turn on the TV and check out Gustav. I was watching this when Karen came in from her computer in the study. “Are you watching the news?”

“I’m watching Gustav,” I said. “It’s moved onshore now.”

“So you haven’t heard the news,” she said.

What news is that?” I said.

“Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant,” she said.

“You’re kidding!” I said. “She will have to resign!” I pictured John McCain fuming at her lies. But it turned out she wasn’t lying. McCain knew about the pregnancy when he announced her selection as his VP. Then that meant that HE was the liar. Why would he do that? Did he think they could maintain the cover-up until the election?

Then the analyses started, one of which stated that Palin being the mom of a pregnant teenage daughter could be appealing to voters. I stopped worrying about it. Too complex. Never worry about anything that is too complex to describe in a sentence of 12 words or less. Most of my worries are about one-word things, like “politics.” And in the politics of this election, it’s a simple worry: “Who will win?” Thought about at that level, I don’t think John McCain could attract enough votes to beat Barack Obama if he figured out how to mate a mink with an oil well.

So I am free to wonder what it must feel like being the parents of a boy who got a governor’s daughter pregnant. And how they must yearn for the calm of those days, before the governor became the vice presidential candidate. I wonder who they will vote for.

I have also been doodling ways that McCain could have worked the news into his presentation of Palin as his selection. That would have been the best thing: get it right out there. Remember when Dick Cheney shot the hunter, then tried to cover it up? Same thing. The cover-up story is always bigger than the up-front story. Truly, McCain would be far better off to have put it up-front in some warm fuzzy way. None of my doodling so far would have been any help to him.

As for agents who have contacted the boy about a book, I would say 25, with another 15 on voicemail. The book will buy the young couple a nice first house.