It’s possible she is so completely out of touch with the acrimony of last week’s Health Care protests that she doesn’t understand how this kind of imagery makes her look like a demagogue. Or maybe she’s just a demagogue.

I’m picking the latter, because when even folks like Elizabeth Hasselbeck called her out for it, she chose to counter it with a tortured piece of writing on her Facebook page that tried to claim it was all just one big metaphor, which could just as easily be hoops talk.

While Palin gets props for trying to walk back the rhetoric by claiming its just taken out of context, the whole misdirection attempt has the “dog ate my homework” feel of a 10th grader.

Most 10th graders grow up, and if their thoughts wander back to their immature lies and deceptions, they’re embarrassed. That hasn’t happened yet to Ms. Palin, so we’ll have to collectively be embarrassed for her.

It would be like me trying to argue that my headline is a reference to Ms. Palin doing her hair. Even if I could convince you that was my intent, it would leave you wondering why I chose something so meaningless when I could have found a thousand better ways to make my point.