Column

February 14, 2017
Tuesday PM

Ketchikan, Alaska - Like the gift that keeps on giving, our former Governor's name has popped back into the public consciousness, primarily because she remains at least peripherally part of the new president's peripatetic posse.

You remember how we all giggled a couple of months ago when her name very-very-very briefly surfaced in discussions about a potential Secretary of State? Yeah, that was a stretch, even for someone who was "Gumby-ied" about as far as humanly possible to be made into a potential Vice President.

All this for "Vice President," a job former VP John Nance Garner once called, "not worth a bucket of warm spit."

Actually what VP Garner actually said was the job actually "wasn't worth a bucket of warm piss" but in those more "genteel" times, you just didn't say "piss" in public so the newspapers (fake newsers even then!!!) reported he said "spit."

Which just isn't the same.

I mean when was the last time that you said "I am so spitted off, I could just piss."

But I digress.

Anyway, FoGuv (former governor) didn't get much traction as Secretary of State (she probably thought it meant a lot of filing and taking dictation). But now, word is (ever wonder what that means? Whose word? Where did it come from? Is it spontaneous like the Big Bang????).....anyway, word is that FoGuv might be up for Ambassador to Canada.

Really?

Not particularly a plum assignment, especially since our neighbors to the north are now building a "privacy hedge" and plan to make us pay for it with a Molson tax.

I mean when was the last time you even heard of the US Ambassador to Canada? You probably weren't even aware we had one. Or that there is a country on our border called "Canada."

Palin and Trump
By Bob Englehart ©, CagleCartoons.com

Okay, that last point was facetious. We all know about Canada. It is where "Canada Dry" comes from.

Which is another one of those weird things. Shouldn't a can of Canada Dry actually be empty?

But I digress, again.

Anyhoo, FoGuv is being is being touted as a potential Embarrassador to Canada.

Mostly, it would appear, that a bunch of London tabloids (fake news, fake news) are doing the touting. Which is odd, because I get that they like to mock us for our immature insanity, but aren't things already insanely immature enough on this side of "The Pond."

Apparently not.

And the "FoGuv for Ambassadress" call is gaining traction in completely disparate parts of the blogosphere.

First, there are those (including approximately 102.6 percent of Alaskans) who are wishing that FoGuv would just go away.

Although they would really prefer she be named Ambassador to Mars, they will settle for Canada because it is next best thing (at least in an "isolated in a vacuum in Deep Space" sort of way).

No news ever escapes Canada because, well, no news ever happens there.

On the other side of the blogosphere, there the ones that look at her and get all "twitter" pated because, well, because she is just so much more attractive than any other VP, or Ambassador to Canada for that matter, has ever been, and they would love to see her back in the news (as much as that's possible in Canada - see above).

And I guess if you were looking for the Ambassador to Canada to have a higher profile, you can't imagine a higher profile than that of Alaska's own FoGuv.

In becoming Ambassador to Canada, FoGuv would join the honorable ranks of noted Americans who have been appointed to the Court of St. Gretsky, including legendary former ambassadors Livingston Merchant and Hanford MacNider. Those are the real names of former ambassadors. I am not making this up.

Of course, things move pretty fast in the Bigly Republic. By the time these words reach print, FoGuv may already be Ambassador to Canada.

Or the new Ambassador to Canada may be Spuds McKenzie.

Either way, it's all good.

So maybe we should just look ahead toward any special challenges FoGuv would need to surmount to be an effective Ambassador to the Great White North, AKA The Republic of Rush.

She does have some advantages. She already is a hockey mom (and grandmom). And she knows how to apply lipstick.

She also comes from a place that actually understands a little bit about what it is like to be under-populated and over wilderness-ed.

Canadians sleep with snowmobiles and FoGuv sleeps with a snowmobiler.

Natch, She will have to reorient her home on Lake Lucille a bit because "seeing Russia" will be a little less important than "seeing Ottawa," or at least "seeing Great Slave Lake."

And, according to my Canadian friends, she will be expected to learn at least one of Canada's two officials languages.

She could probably skip the French because no one west of Sault Ste. Marie even pays attention to it. In Western Canada, French is "tout simplement ne pas fait."

Seriously, fewer things are more entertaining than listening to a bunch of BCers mumble through the one chorus of O Canada that is now required to sung in French.

But she would have to learn Canadian English.

I don't think that is too much a stretch for her. She did have that period where she made herself generally understood in American English in the 2008 election.

But being a diplomat will require keeping up on events (reading those danged "fake news" Canadian newspapers like the Edmonton Icepick and the Regina Dull Times-Post).

And also being tactful enough to use the right Canadian English word at the right time, not just adding "eh" to each sentence or throwing in the random "uhboot."

Otherwise she may find herself in some of those "squirmishes" that she dislikes so much.

Could be yuge. Could be fun. Definitely not sad.

Best of all, FoGuv, everyone in Canada is guaranteed to "stand on guard, for thee!"

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