Caroline Kennedy's father worked his way up from the house to the senate to the presidency. How dull!

Now Arnold Schwartzenegger... there's a guy who started at the top! No boring Congressional runs, no tenure as dogcatcher. Straight-up Guvernator!

Caroline should refer to the Guvernator as often as possible. HE'S the Kennedy family member Americans know and like. He has the personality, the famous name, the biceps... and he has a funny accent, which hasn't hurt at all. Caroline's voice is rather dull and lifeless. She might adopt a slighly Austrian accent. She wouldn't sound so....well, so unprepared and empty-headed...if she gave her poorly thought-out answers mit un Owstryan oxent!

Education? "I sink teachrz do a fobbulous job! I don't sink zey get the rezpekt zey dezerve. My fowzzer vas prezdint but my cousin's huzbent played a kindergarten teacher and let me tell you, he vorked hard und he vas only pretending! Now he is governor. Zat is how I vant to be. A hard vorker who pretends very hard and zen becomes somesink."

Americans love an underdog. And immigrant success stories. And movies about kindergarten cops and barbarians. And we love wrestlers and bodybuilders and moosehunters. If I were Caroline, I would only agree to do interview shows if Danny DeVito asked the questions. Then Arnold could come out, and mayhem would ensue as he gave everyone noogies.

She'd totally, totally win. Then in 2010 it would be all, like, "Senator II - The Re-Election".

If she keeps talking about how her father was president, so, like, now she's decided that, like, she wants to be...uh.. be like him and be like a ... a public servant...zzzzzzzzzz.

He says they'd been planning to get married long before Bristol became pregnant.)

She became pregnant at 17. Guess he was planning for marriage at 15 or 16.

Look, a man doesn't need a high school diploma if he plans on staying in Alaska for the rest of his life. It's not like they are begging for geologists to work for the oil companies. In the 1980s I knew 4 women in the NY/NJ metro area who were married to guys with geology degrees. They all worked for the oil companies and they all got laid off when Wall Street crashed. Geologists are pretty common. They tend not to migrate to Alaska and stay there. They work there for a while and they leave. They are, generally, short-term imports.

You can work on an oil rig, you can work at 711, you can become an electrician or a plumber without a high school diploma in Alaska. There isn't a huge population. It's not like you're going to be in the running for a spot as an electrician's apprentice against a guy with an engineering degree. Or even against a guy who graduated from Apex Tech. (Don't take this as a slam against technical schools - I think America needs far more technical schools and is foolish not to have them). If you are a man who can lift heavy things and do simple computation, you can get a job in Alaska. Different story if you are a woman. Making babies is Job Numero Uno. After that, if you can't lift heavy stuff, you have fewer opportunities than the guys do. I'll bet there is probably heavy competition for meth lab work. It's indoors and does not require much in the way of skill.... or teeth.

Levi Johnston doesn't need any more education than he has. Unless one day he decides to leave his wife and kids and take off for a warmer clime. Then his wife may have to go to work. But by then, she may have been appointed to the US senate by the governor. Stuff like that happens in America.

I don't know about Alaska, but I believe that in NY, Bristol qualifies for some form of welfare/ADC if she remains unmarried. I recall a son of my cousin impregnated a girl and she moved in with my cousin and his wife, but did marry my cousin's son. As a single mother living independently from her own parents she qualified for welfare and for aid to dependent children.

I'll bet you can guess the mother eventually flew the coop and left the kid with PopPop and Gammy.

Karma. That's what they got for taking tax money when they and their son and the child's mother were all perfectly capable of paying for the child's support. But why pay when they could get something for nothing? And yep, they are Republicans. They decided they should get something for nothing because all those black welfare queens were getting something for nothing, so why shouldn't they? Of course, they'd never really actually met a black welfare queen, but they'd heard about them, all right....

Anyway, Bristol Palin does not live in NY, so she won't be getting welfare. And her family is real independent and doesn't believe in taxes and stuff that taxes pay for, like mother and child health insurance and food supplementation. They'll be fine.

They are a twenty first century Dickensian family. They have Dickensian names, they have a family full of drama and whimsy, they have societal dropouts, a dogsbody and they may have an oxycontinized Sarry Gamp.

I hope they are around for a long time. Not as a national political family, but definitely in occasional magazine installments.

She's a fighter. She works hard. She knows the ropes of NY politics. I think she will make a terrific senator for New York. As Joan points out, Ms Kennedy-Schlossberg can use the opportunity to run for Maloney's seat.

It's a good deal all around.

And named it Chastity.

I guess Tripp is a pretty good name, considering.

Why not buy a hybrid Highlander?