BREAKING NEWS--SARAH PALIN REPLACED BY TINA FEY

I have it through frequently reliable entertainment contacts that Sarah Palin has been removed from the Republican ticket—but only physically. With her own cooperation—“I just can’t stand the way the press looks at me anymore!”--Palin is being sequestered on Little Diomede (previously unvisited by an Alaskan governor), the island closest to Russia’s Big Diomede, where she will mend fishing nets, throw zingers at the locals, keep an eye on Putin for us, abuse her authority, and shoot baby seals for the remainder of the campaign.

Fey has taken up Palin’s schedule seamlessly, without the need for a briefing, and will continue the campaign filling in for McCain on days when he is too angry or confused to complete the planned itinerary himself.

The switch occurred yesterday morning, at nine a.m., when Palin was escorted by four ear-phoned, sunglassed men, disguised Secret Service into a waiting red pickup and driven by a circuitous route to Memphis International. Ten minutes later the Vice Presidential candidate’s limo pulled up at the bus station where Fey alighted to join McCain in his humongous campaign bus along with her own makeup and hair. Within minutes, according to reporters, the Senator from Arizona was laughing again, though he later admitted he didn’t “get” what Fey-Palin was talking about.

According to the Morris Office, who represents Palin, her deal for the prolonged impersonation, which includes weekend breaks so she can appear both as Fey-Palin and Palin-Fey on “Saturday Night Live,” was “in the mid eight figures”--but was tucked away in Clause 383e of the Bail-Out as a service to the public that both Republicans and Democrats agreed upon immediately.

Neither Fey’s agent nor her publicist could be reached, though their assistants reported they were “laughing all the way to the bank.”

One can only hope the bank wasn’t Wachovia.