The GILF is gone and the comedian cometh

Sarah Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska and queen GILF on July 26th. Some commentators are suggesting an article in the most recent edition Vanity Fair may have been the straw which broke this particular glamour camel’s back.

Writing on MSNBC this morning Howard Fineman tries to make some sense of the announcement.

Why now? Why this minute? Well, perhaps there is scandal lurking in the Great North that we in the Lower 48 don’t know about. Maybe there is video of the Palin family setting a polar bear adrift on ice floes. But there is no reason to suspect so and, in the meantime, it’s worth noting that both the timing and the manner of Palin’s announcement were pretty shrewd.

She picked a long holiday weekend at the onset of summer (when, by the way, “Meet the Press” is pre-empted by Wimbledon tennis) to issue her stunner. She took no questions after her announcement and then disappeared into her house. As a result, she controlled the message, which was:

I’m the scrappy “point guard” (her basketball position on a state-champion team long ago) and I’m gonna take it to the hoop of freedom for ya!

Now she will be free to travel the country, rake in a lot of dough as a speaker, work the GOP and conservative dinner circuit, hawk her book once it comes out — and see how the game develops.