“I feel completely fucked over.”

Nancy Wilson to Entertainment Weekly, after the McCain campaign shoplifted Heart’s “Barracuda” this week. Sarah “Pussy” Palin, understudy leader of the free world, was too chickenshit to respond.

Heart’s Nancy Wilson responds to McCain campaign’s use of ‘Barracuda’ at Republican convention [EW]

“For the complete story on Sarah Palin – including how her family deals with Trig’s condition, and how they are embracing Bristol’s pregnancy – pick up this week’s PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.”

Well, that’s nice, and it’ll certainly make our next visit to Ralphs more entertaining while we suffer that idiot writing a check ahead of us in line.

And for now, that’s all we’ll hear from Sarah Palin in her own words.

It’s been a week, and the Republican nomineee for Vice President of the United States has not spoken in an unscripted or uncontrolled setting. She hasn’t held a press conference. She hasn’t chatted with the boys in the back of the Straight Talk Express. Heck, she hasn’t even shown up in the warm confines of a Fox News studio.

What’s she afraid of? Is the future understudy leader of the free world too scared to talk to even cuddly Chris Wallace? (Stay tuned on that.)

To be fair, she’ll be busy — she has thirty fundraisers scheduled over the next sixty days. (Not for the campaign, which is sucking at the public teat this fall, but the RNC and state parties.) But if Barry can face down Papa Bear, surely she can drop by Chris Matthews to show us who has the hardballs.

Unless she’s a chickenshit. Are you a chickenshit, Sarah Palin? Because we just said you are — all talk, no stick. And we think you’re too chickenshit to prove us wrong.

Sarah Palin Talks About Her Family Struggles [People]

When Will Palin Meet the Press? [Newsweek]

Chuck Jones gets all the attention — for Bugs, for Road Runner, for the Grinch — but our unsung childhood hero is Bill Melendez, the animator who brought Peanuts to life.

Things could have gone terribly wrong: the network wanted a laugh track, the network wanted adults to voice the kids, the network wanted anything other than jazz on the soundtrack. But Melendez and Sparky Schulz stuck to their guns, insisting that their way was the only way it would work.

And so they created “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, and we slept in Charlie Brown sheets and pillowcases for years. Robert Smigel — Triumph, all those SNL shorts — calls the Christmas special “the greatest half-hour American TV has ever produced.”

Bill Melendez died Tuesday, at age 91.

Bill Melendez, 91; Award-Winning ‘Peanuts’ Animator [WaPo]

Whatever the demographers say, to be a Boomer you had to come of age during the Sixties. If you grew up in the Seventies — like Barack Obama, like Sarah Palin, like me — you’re not a Boomer. You’re not really Gen X, either — that’s Eighties. We weren’t born with Sesame Street, we didn’t go to high school with MTV. Video games? Pong.

We don’t have a label. We’ve rarely been pandered to — Dazed and Confused, Wayne’s World, that’s about it. (Rocking out to Queen in a Pacer? That’s ours, baby.) We’re in the shadows of two mountains.

Let me tell you a few things about the Seventies. It was the decade when retro first hit the market, when America started looking back instead of forward. American Graffiti. Happy Days. Grease. Animal House. We didn’t have our own moment. We had a rerun of the Fifties.

And at the end of the decade, we embraced Ronald Reagan.

Not all of us, heavens no. But enough to make it noticeable. Some of the smart kids were tired of the Democrats, tired of Jimmy, tired of Teddy, who wasn’t yet the Lion of the Senate but the idiot brother who drowned a chick and supported what we called fascist legislation. No, he wouldn’t do.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. (Even our protest lines were borrowed from the Fifties.) My co-editor of the student newspaper’s annual satire supplement — who loved the Who, who as a copy editor suggested “All We Are Saying” as the perfect headline for a John Lennon candlelight vigil — would a few years later start a campus neocon tabloid.

I followed Carlin. He followed P.J. O’Rourke.

This fall, we’re taking over the country. The torch has been passed to a new generation, and this time it’s personal. It’s the Barry & Sarah Show, hosted by Jon Stewart, fortysomethings all. Joe and John will have walk-on parts, but they’re both irrelevant to the story. It’s our world now, and you kids will just have to deal with it. You’ll get your turn soon enough. If anything’s left.

Here’s how you launder a story: A supermarket tabloid is not a respectable news source (until, um, it is), but if you can get a respectable news source to comment on it, you’ve put it in play. Bonus points if the respectable news source brings it to your attention first.

So we’ve got Geezer flack Steve Schmidt emailing reporters: “The allegations contained on the cover of the National Enquirer insinuating that Governor Palin had an extramarital affair are categorically false.”

What allegations? What cover? What affair? Wait, what?

We of course refuse to stoop so low as to spread unfounded rumors. So here’s the cover to put the flack’s statement in context, and here’s a link to respectable Howard Kurtz dishing the details explaining the background. We thank you for helping us preserve our journalistic virtue.

McCain Aide Rips Tabloid Report [WaPo]

Counterclockwise from left: Non-pregnant daughter, caribou, blood, Sarah Palin. Enjoy your breakfast!

A Hunting Trophy [LAT, via SanFranLefty]

See more shocking teen pregnancies! Is her high school sweetheart ready for fatherhood? Did David Duchovny pick the right moment to duck into a pestorking addiction clinic?

Sums up “Democratic strategist” George Lakoff, “It’s conceivable a 17-year-old girl just screwed the GOP.”

Sarah Palin: Political Opponent Recalls Being Ridiculed [Us Weekly]