DC/NY Axis Outraged

Senator John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate has set off alarm bells throughout the Beltway and into the media center of New York City. Washington Lobbyist Bernice Satanica was deeply alarmed about McCain's choice. "Palin's so inexperienced. She's not familiar with Washington's ways. For example, she doesn't know how to hide a lobbyist's gift from public scrutiny. She doesn't know how to work the system to give tax dollars to your undeserving campaign donors. She doesn't know which local park is best to stash the bodies of political associates or former lovers. She'll be a disaster."

In New York City, the reaction was just as swift. "I mean, my god, does she even read Frank Rich every Sunday? Has she ever read Derrida or Foucault? Is America really ready for that kind of president?" asked Paulette Kael, the literary editor of the New York Review of Books. "Look at her. Her husband's a union member who works with his hands, her son is in the military, she had to work for everything she has, she engages in hunting and fishing, and, my god, she has five kids, none of which are adopted from exotic countries. This will seem so alien to voters. I'm not sure how America will be able to relate to her."

Not all of the consternation came from left of the political spectrum. Regal Puddington III is the editor in chief of The Weekly Review, an obscure conservative literary journal. As he lit his pipe and adjusted his bow tie, he asked: "Does she even know her Burke from her Locke? Her Mises from her Hayek?" Puddington, who has been to London, Paris, and other cosmopolitan cities around the world, but has yet to visit anywhere in America besides New York City, his ski chalet in Boulder, and his summer home in Martha's Vineyard, considers himself an expert in Alaskan politics as he once read a Jack London novel in middle school. "I'm not sure America will be comfortable with a vice president who didn't attend Dartmouth or Yale."