Good points, and it’s pretty convenient for that effect. I think the real story is more likely to be elements of both: she’s being forced to resign because of a scandal, and she chose the most convenient nearby time to do so.

Her supporters are so rabid, paranoid-delusional, and selectively attentive that she just needed to appear somewhat positive on her departure to maintain their support throughout the scandal that’s probably about to become public. They’ll be reminded of her image in this positive light on a nationalist holiday, and that’s all the help they need to convince themselves that anyone who says anything bad about her in the coming weeks hates America and hates freedom and hates women and hates the troops and eats babies and kicks puppies and loves Osama bin Laden.

As a result, most of the mainstream media, especially the television “news” outlets, will be extremely, negligently soft on their reporting of any scandal that comes out of this, because if they imply anything bad about her, all of her loud, idiotic cult supporters will foam at the mouth and write letters and make angry phone calls and rally their idiotic friends and boycott the networks for a day until they forget why they were angry and get lulled back into their fat corn comas watching their sorry excuse for news on their plasma credit-card-debt TVs in their giant subprime McMansions that are surrounded by nothing but other giant subprime McMansions and are a convenient 45-minute highway drive in their “compact” SUVs to their bullshit jobs at the insurance or financial-services companies that we love so much these days.

** Less is Mohrer: Regarding Palin’s rapid departure.

Happy 4th of July!