Ready or not, here comes the white, right, Oprah

On this July 5, Rush Limbaugh is cursing John McCain for even being born. Bill O'Reilly has gone into 24/7 production mode on his next book, which he knows will be his last. Sean Hannity is polishing his resume to send to The Weather Channel. Ann Coulter is packing her surgical tools. William Kristol is looking into his mirror and saying, over and over, "What have I done? What have I done?"

All of these people make their living in conservative media, and they know, better than anyone, what is happening with Sarah Palin. She is getting out of politics, where she is a relative, low-paid nobody, into media, where she is still going to be a relative nobody, but an extremely wealthy, and visible, one. She is about to become the white, right, Oprah. Bye-bye, O'Reilly.

She already IS the white, right, Oprah, trapped in the wrong business. There are 20 million Americans out there who worship Sarah, who will attach themselves to everything she does, every move she makes, every product she endorses. By comparison, Oprah averages 8.6 million viewers daily, a Nielsen rating of about 5, and those levels have made Oprah an international celebrity and a multi-millionaire. Sarah only needs to switch businesses, from politics to media, and she started that switch Friday, when she resigned the Alaska governorship, which of course is a total waste of her star power.

If "Sarah" could start tomorrow, the show would be pulling a Nielsen of 6 or 7 by September, and I'm not talking about some Fox News production. She would be crazy to go to work for Fox. She has a proven business model for creating her own production company, down to the company's name, which would be Haras, Inc., just like Oprah's Harpo, Inc., which everybody knows is "Oprah" spelled backwards.

She won't have to learn anything, change the way she looks, change the way she talks, change the way she thinks. She is a media star waiting to happen. All she needs is a studio. Look for her to relocate from Alaska soon, to a media center in a conservative part of the country with a hub airport. Atlanta would be my guess.