Merry Christmas, Sarah Palin -- thanks for all the laughs

I’m a big fan of Christmas, but I’m not inclined to join Sarah Palin’s pro-Christmas crusade. Her new book, “Good Tidings, Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas,� lays out the case that Christmas is under attack by stringing together a litany of slights against the holiday -- real, imagined and exaggerated -- that do not add up to much more than her usual chip-on-the-shoulder complaint against anyone outside her narrow definition of “real Americans.�

A column by Michelle Cottle of the Daily Beast includes a pretty good summation of Palin’s book: “From the first chapter, it is clear that, whatever her concerns about ‘a Christ-less Christmas,’ Palin has found a convenient frame on which to hang her rage at pretty much everything: Obamacare, Obamaphones, Nancy Pelosi, the national debt, gay marriage, sexual sin, crony capitalism, the preferential treatment of Muslims (whoo-wee! does she get rolling on that one), the lamestream media, Chick-fil-A haters, abortion, Mitt Romney’s hair, and on and on. No liberal stereotype, from Birkenstocks to the French, vegans, and NPR, is too tired to sneer at.�

The book is also peppered with complaints about her treatment at the hands of pretty much everyone during her run for vice president in 2008. It’s amazing how put-upon Palin still feels, given that she has turned her very thin political resume and limited intellectual gifts into a lucrative celebrity enterprise that has included a cable reality show, TV commentator gigs and bestselling books (although her Christmas book may not be setting the publishing world on fire). She should be immensely pleased with how far she has gone from her days as a lowly city council member in a remote burg in the Alaskan outback.

Ah, but Christmas approaches and I am inclined to be generous to Palin, no matter how niggling she may be. For political cartoonists, she has been a gift that has kept on giving. No one in politics is nearly as much fun to feature in a graphic satire. Far from wanting to see her fade from the scene, I wish her many comebacks, many more years of selling her brand of daffy conservatism, many more winks and “you betchas.�

Merry Christmas -- not mere happy holidays -- to Sarah and Rush and Hannity and Cruz and all the rest of my favorite targets. I look forward to a new year of mixing it up and carrying on the debate.