"If anyone from small-town America can grow up to become president, surely it is Sarah Palin. She remains, by far, the most attractive woman in U.S. politics," writes Leonard Doyle in the Sunday Daily Telegraph.

But, hey, didn’t she quit her job in her first term as governor of Alaska, saying rather inexplicably that it was because "she loves Alaska"? So, how’s that again?

Mr. Doyle goes on: "America’s elite chortled at the explanations. When someone pointed out that she shot her first rabbit on her back porch aged just ten, the media deemed that, at 46, she had shot herself in both feet."

Indeed, Sarah Palin has gone on offering haikus of philosophy on her Twitter site, many inaccurately referenced to the famous, such as Socrates, when actually they are from someone else. Being specifically correct isn’t what moves Sarah Palin.

But, as writer Doyle notes correctly, "The media is often a poor predictor of events in the U.S. It was slow to identify Barack Obama’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination for the presidency. It completely missed the story of the global economic collapse. And thus, predictions about the end of Sarah Palin’s political life seem premature."

So, kids, we just have to wait and see.

***

Finally, after heaven only knows how many years, Whitney Houston’s new album, "I Look to You," arrives in September from Arista Records. This disc was slowly completed under the guidance of Whitney’s discoverer/mentor, the legendary Clive Davis.

Clive has never given up on Whitney, no matter the rumors whispered, how the tabloids screamed and her own infamous reality show with ex-hubby Bobby Brown.

So, on July 21, at the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center, the maestro Clive is putting on a cocktail reception and then an exclusive listening party. A select group will get to hear what Whitney can still deliver. I am betting this album goes over like gangbusters.

I first interviewed Whitney when she was just a young girl, fresh and dewy and untouched by the vagaries of fortune. What a doll she was then. And the last time I saw Whitney perform was two years ago in Los Angeles at a tribute to Clive. She looked glorious and sounded even better. Everybody was screaming – "Come back!" But then our Whitney sort of fell off the map again.


Whitney Houston © Getty Images

Well, she is back now! She is really serious about reactivating one of the great musical careers of all time.

***

Europeans have gone mad over the new show that is the biggest Vincent Van Gogh exhibition ever seen anywhere. This London event has made locals forget all about how their Members of Parliament are abusing their expense accounts. They are well into deep group psychoanalysis as to what made the famous painter tick.

"The Real Van Gogh" exhibit is causing speculation that, 120 years after his death, Vincent may now be diagnosed as having intermittent porphyria (the disease that caused King George III to lose the American colonies). They cite Van Gogh’s psychotic episodes, a family history of mental illness and his self-mutilation of cutting off his ear as a symbol of sexual castration, or a subconscious desire to possess his mother, plus a wish to emulate the offering of the bull’s ear in the bull ring as a prize. They also cite tinnitus, alcoholism, depression, gonorrhea, migraines, epilepsy and asthma as affecting his work!