Sarah’s Spanx

True Story. A friend of mine just returned from a weekend in Pittsburgh where she apparently checked into the same Marriott hotel room where Sarah Palin had just checked out. Housekeeping had not yet cleaned the room and so aside from an unmade bed, an empty can of Coke and a towel strewn bathroom, my friend made a surprising discovery – a discarded pair of black Spanx in the garbage.

“Seriously…you found Sarah’s Spanx in the trash?” I asked my friend. “Did you take them? You could’ve auctioned them on Ebay! What size was she?”

My friend – who does not want to be outted on Spanxgate – has been kicking herself that she didn’t snag the slimming control top and auction it online. She realizes she could have given the money to the Obama campaign or better yet, to charities that support women who can’t afford Spanx. No doubt, Sarah’s undergarments could have fetched some serious cash from everyone from an apolitical panty fetishist to a rabid Right Winger. And the media would have gone berserk.

You can imagine the tawdry headlines: “Sarah Palin Trashes Taxpayer Paid Spanx in Pittsburgh Hotel Room” or the inevitable “Sarah Gets Spanked in Pittsburgh!”

As the “Obama-is-a-Socialist” argument gets tired and the Palin Family Shopping Spree story has run its course, pundits would now be pontificating on whether money spent on Palin’s girdle was a good idea and how much is too much to spend on sucking in a woman’s muffin top.

Larry King would be asking pols if Spanx makes Sarah more relatable to the every woman battling cellulite or if her overpriced thigh huggers suggest a secret diva. And Elisabeth Hasselbeck, defending her new BFF, would be arguing that yes, Wal-Mart shoppers can relate to the pricey, scientifically engineered Lycra that can only be found at fancy department stores like Saks because, well, everyone knows a girl wants to look svelte. “But let’s not forget, what’s really important is that Obama has a socialist agenda!”

And inevitably, Gloria Steinem would probably pen an op-ed in The New York Times about the ongoing sexism in the media’s presidential campaign coverage titled: “A Woman is Still Measured by the Size of Her Girdle.”

So the good news is that given my friend’s discretion or sheer squeamishness about digging into the trash, (no, she never checked the size) Sarah narrowly avoided what could have been this election’s “October Surprise,” – the Sarah Spanx scandal. So fortunately for us Americans, the seriousness of the campaign can continue.

And when the post mortem on Election 2008 begins on November 5th and we reflect back on John Edwards’s $400 tarmac side haircut and whether Hillary’s laugh was too loud or forced and if McCain could have benefited from tooth whitening next to Obama and Biden’s fabulous sets of pearly whites, we’ll be relieved that at least this election we never got wrapped up in the utter silliness of a candidate’s underwear. Boxers or briefs? That’s just so 1992.