An article from yesterday’s McClatchy Washington Bureau noted that the whereabouts of Sarah Palin are in some doubt. The headline asked “Where’s Sarah,” and the opening line answered vaguely that “Sarah Palin has disappeared from the 2016 presidential campaign.”

Indeed, Palin seems to have dropped from sight. A sidebar posted with the article listed ten prominent Republican campaign events held over the past four months that attracted numerous GOP luminaries, including presidential candidates, that were not graced by the presence of Palin.

This disappearance is all the more peculiar when coupled with her assertion last January that she is “absolutely…seriously interested” in running for president herself. Of course, nobody with any functioning brain cells is taking her campaign conjecture seriously. She has no organization or staff and her SarahPAC is drawing paltry contributions. [On a side note, Palin has given just 6.6% of her PAC funds to other candidates over the past two years. Instead, she is spending the money mostly on herself. Yet she still has the gall to criticize Hillary Clinton for helping to run a charitable foundation that has helped millions of deserving people]

More ominous from the perspective of Palin, and those who need a regular fix of her unique brand of incoherence, she has been absent from her duties as a Fox News contributor. The last appearance on the network seems to have been in January on Sean Hannity’s program. That booking four months ago was clearly arranged as an attempt to recover from a speech she gave at Wingnut Steve King’s Iowa Freedom Summit, where she so embarrassed herself that even fellow conservatives were turning their heads in shame. Hannity recognized the ditch that Palin had dug and tried to give her a platform to redeem herself, but it didn’t go well:

Hannity: You also got criticized for the speech by a lot of people, even some of the people in the crowd that tend to be supporters of yours. Did the TelePrompter go down? Did you have trouble with the copy? Was there any moment in the speech where you had any difficulty, because people have been so critical?
Palin: Well, you know I don’t read the praise and I don’t read the criticism cause I know how you guys, or how the media in general works.

Thereupon she went on to defend the speech against the criticism that she said she didn’t read. Her defense consisted mainly of insisting that the Iowa audience that came to see her were satisfied, and besides the media, and um America, and um we the people, and um you betcha.

During the entire segment she seemed to be pissed off. Was it her sensitivity to the humiliating address in Iowa? Was she mad at Hannity? Hard to say. But even when he asked about her presidential ambitions she snapped at him:

Hannity: While you were there, on the ground, you were asked if you’re considering running for president. Your answer?
Palin: I was asked by a pesty reporter while I was promoting my Sportsman Channel show, Amazing America with Sarah Palin, I was asked if I were to be interested at all in running for office, maybe the presidency, and it’s certainly not newsworthy for me to have answered “Oh yeah, I’m interested, yeah. Next question.”

Meeeow! Imagine the nerve of that “pesty” reporter asking a perfectly ordinary question that anyone in Palin’s shoes should expect. In fact, Hannity just asked her the very same question. Next those jackals will wanna know what magazines she reads. It’s especially cute that she refers to her own cable reality show as Amazing America “with Sarah Palin,” as if she has a contractual obligation to formally include her name whenever mentioning the title.

Palin’s demeanor was so unpleasant that it would be understandable if Hannity and other Fox News hosts are now reluctant to invite her back. Or maybe she’s busy with her web video channel. Nah, that can’t be it. She only posted nine videos the whole month of May for a total of 20 minutes of programming. A more likely scenario is that a Fox honcho (i.e. CEO Roger Ailes) has decided that Palin is now a liability as the 2016 campaign season heats up and they don’t want her around screwing up their plans to send a Republican to the White House.

I suppose that we shouldn’t complain about Palin being off the air, whatever the reason. But while her mindless inanities will not be missed, the country’s comedians are going to suffer a severe drought of primo material. Just to tide you over in case Palin remains sequestered in the tundra, here is how Jon Stewart covered her disaster in Iowa last January (the whole clip is worth watching, but if you can’t wait, Palin enters at about five minutes in).

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