THE WHITE OPRAH -- COUNT ON IT!

No matter what your take on Oprah is, she's a nationwide force to be reckoned with. Women of all races, religions, and politics find in her a daily fountainhead of ideas, values and purposes. Then when you consider she has no Congress or Supreme Court to deal with, that almost adds up to more undisputed influence than the presidency. Which is precisely why Sarah Palin wants to be the White Oprah...!

She's well on her way. Consider the tens of millions who find in her precisely what their deepest unexpressed yearnings yearn for. For some -- frankness. Others -- perkiness. Still others -- the voice of the forgotten "Real America." Folks like this come along every decade or so. There was Charles Lindbergh...Arthur Godfrey...Walter Cronkite... Bill Gates. Each one touching a bottomless psychic nerve.

When you take a closer look, you find other historical parallels. Palin like Oprah suddenly rose out of nowhere from the margins of the culture. Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, Huey Long and Bill Clinton were the same. Raw, undistinguished populists who suddenly burst upon the social firmament like a Haley's Comet.

Comets of course have spectacular but short lifespans. Everyone of these "comets" has come and gone. And yet, their trail of light has left its mark (and its shadow). Their times would have been vastly different without them. Palin's genetic gifts are the incontrovertible fact that people can find in her whatever they're looking for. A voice for their own embarrassed thoughts...a face for their squaeky-clean image of America...a mind uncluttered by all that arrogant knowledge pretense...even someone who you can laugh with when she's being laughed at.

That's powerful stuff, folks, and Barracuda Sarah smells it. Just like Oprah did back here on small-time Chicago television not so many years ago. We all have a front row seat from which to watch....