I own a pair of Sarah Palin shoes. Not the “do-me” pumps fetishized by her friends and foes alike. Mine are customized Keds with her face all over them.

On the rare occasions I’m brave enough to wear them in public, I feel like a pre-costume-change superhero whose secret powers dwell solely (no pun intended) in her feet and which the rest of her prays she won’t be forced to unleash.

Sarah Palin’s own superpower—to annoy or inspire people beyond reason, seemingly just for existing—has been well-documented. In my case, she obliged me to tone down my jabs against “tribalism.”

I was always quick to deride the phenomenon when the topic was O. J.’s “innocence” or the Muslim overreaction to those Muhammad cartoons. Then McCain tapped Palin as his running mate.

When Palin strode onto the stage (wearing those heels), I recognized her name, having heard some conservative publisher laud her after his magazine’s Alaska cruise. That was it. So my reaction, like the rest of the audience’s, was 99% fact-free.

All I could think of was: “Girl! Girl win!! Yay girl!!!”

I wasted the next week getting and forwarding hastily created fan art and songs about Palin. I was 45 years old. It was embarrassing. And too exhilarating to stop.

I’ve since calmed down, unlike a number of folks you’d think would have more pressing things on their minds than some ex-non-Veep. Even if their minds are, shall we say, travel-sized. And in boxer/rapist/Algonquin wit Mike Tyson’s case, permanently bruised.

Recap: Last week, Mike Tyson was a guest on a sports talk radio show. The topic turned to an allegation in Joe McGinniss’s (poorly received and since mostly discredited) “tell all” book about the former Alaska governor: that she’d slept with former NBA player Glen Rice.

The Daily Caller reported Tyson’s on-air response:

“Glen Rice is a wonderful man,” Tyson said. “He’s a wonderful guy. You want her to be with somebody like [Dennis] Rodman getting up…in there. Pushing her guts up in the back of her head!…yeah baby! Let’s get that donkey in here now. Just imagine Palin with a big old black stallion ripping. Yeehaw!”

“[I]n life in general you know…everybody got to get that out of their system when they get out of college,” he said. “If you’re a black man, every white girl, every uppity middle class…everybody got to get their share of love.”…