The Palin Family: They're Just Like Us!

John McCain's most successful blow against Barack Obama came with the brilliant ad tagging Obama as a celebrity and linking him with Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.

If the Democrats are the party of Britney, it turns out that the Republicans are the party of Jamie-Lynn.

Yes, that's a reference to 17 year old Bristol Palin's pregnancy. But no, it's not a gratuitous swipe. In fact it's not a swipe at all.

First off, Bristol's situation isn't so weird or sordid. It's not like she got knocked up during a one-night-stand. According to the New York Daily News, Bristol has been dating 18 year old Levi Johnston for a year. It's perfectly plausible that the two would have been married, even had she not gotten pregnant. (They plan to marry now.) Sarah Palin and her husband were high school sweethearts. Look, there's not a lot to do in Alaska besides snowmobiling and sex.


Levi Johnston describes himself on MySpace: "I'm a f---in' redneck."

More importantly the travails of Sarah Palin's family are humanizing. She's got a bunch of kids, so naturally she's got a bunch of problems. These problems, together with her biography and great looks, are quickly making her a tabloid star. And the tabloidization of Sarah Palin may be the best thing that could happen to McCain.

A tabloid star is a public figure with known foibles. (Public figures without foibles are relegated to the ever less popular broadsheet newspapers.) To be a tabloid star is to be built up, brought down, built up again on a weekly basis. To be a tabloid star means ultimately to be an object of affection (Naomi Judd, Kathie Lee Gifford, Elizabeth Taylor) or at least concern (Britney Spears) but rarely to be hated. (John Edwards is an unlikable, and I expect short-lived, tabloid leading man.)

To be a tabloid star is to become an addiction for a public that ordinarily doesn't give a damn about politics. Bill Clinton became a tabloid mega-star with the Lewinsky scandal. And his approvals were never higher than then.

A tabloid star is a larger-than-life everyday person -- an oxymoron best described by the minds at Us Weekly: Stars, They're Just Like Us.

There are a whole lot of people on both sides (and even more on no side) of the aisle who will sympathize with Sarah Palin. As Chris Rock once said, referring to white America, "the rest of the country is filled up with broke-ass white people. Broke-ass, livin' in a trailer home, eatin' mayonnaise sandwiches, f*#king their sister, listening to John Cougar Mellencamp records..."

Of course, next week we could find out that Palin's a criminal or a bat-sh#t crazy religious fanatic -- or both. In that case, she'd disappear or become a pundit.