Sarah Palin and The 'Twilight' Cult

I think there's a strong link between the popularity of the "Twilight" vampire novels and movies and Alaska's Sarah Palin.

I can't completely nail it down for you - it's this weird mixture of fantasy, immortality, sexuality, power and powerlessness. And heaps of plain old-fashioned shlock. It's about not just escaping reality but abandoning it, seeing it only as a hopeless realm and instead creating a fantasy of brilliant and daring success to call Home.

I've been trying to read the first "Twilight" book but it's slow going. Perhaps if I were 13 years old, it would seem to contain some kind of wisdom. But it just kind of bores me, seems kind of whiney, and why the heck would a 90 year old vampire want to hang out at high school? Don't get my wrong - I'll read all kinds of shlocky fiction - like the not-very-good-but-to-me-enjoyable series of Repairman Jack novels by F. Paul Wilson. I've read 5 or 6 of them and like them all, but I know it's like a bad bag full of drive-thru cheeseburgers.

A few things link Palin and the adventures of Bella -- like the way Palin keeps reacting to the childish antics of 19-year-old Levi Johnston, her grandbaby's daddy. And the way Palin writes about herself on Facebook. It's as if Palin sees Levi as one of the Bad Vampires rather than the Good Vampires Bella bonds with. And of course, there was the recent Oprah shows with "Twilight" creator Stephenie Meyer on Nov. 13th and Palin on the following show on Nov. 16th.

Here's a simple experiment - read an excerpt from Palin's book here and then read an excerpt from "Twilight" here. Reads like the same tortured adolescence to me.