Dear Sarah Palin,

Look, I know speechwriting is hard. Gathering those dozens of advisers and having witty sayings filtered through focus groups can take time. And you really did put a huge amount of effort into that acceptance speech the other day.

But 37 million people watched that speech. One would assume that includes the few hundred hard-core supporters you’re speaking in front of today, as well as the thousands of loser couch potatoes like myself who have nothing better to do on a Saturday afternoon than watch CNN.

So why are you repeating your speech verbatim? Why are you using the exact same lines that have been replayed over the news networks since? And why, oh why, are you repeating the same jokes you gave then, as if your crowd hadn’t heard them before? You know, the joke about your kids missing the chef you fired? Or the one about selling the governor’s private jet on eBay (even though you didn’t)?

People aren’t laughing at your jokes, because they’ve all heard them before. They’re applauding, because they liked it the first time and are so awed by your presence that they don’t mind not seeing anything new.

TV viewers are a bit more discriminating.