At UN, Puzzled Karzai Turns Down “Gift” Of Sarah Palin

“I do not wish to question the generosity of the American people,” a confused-looking Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai told a hastily assembled United Nations news conference. “But we are respectfully declining the gift of the very lovely yet middle-aged woman your nation offered us today.”

Karzai, meeting with Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, apparently misunderstood the purpose of the conversation, believing Palin to be a “gift” from the American people to his nation.

“She is very pretty for a woman of her years,” Karzai told reporters, speaking through an interpreter. “But for breeding purposes, she is somewhat too advanced to be useful, and I understand she already has bred five children. And for purposes of pleasure, we would have expected a younger woman as a gift.”

Reporters pointed out to Karzai that Palin was not intended as a gift; she was meeting with him in order to bolster her foreign policy credentials for the upcoming Presidential election.

Karzai, erupting with laugher, told the reporters they were wrong.

“This is absurd,” Karzai said. “The nuances of a relationship with a country as complex as ours can hardly be absorbed in a meeting lasting 20 minutes. She was not there for political purposes. She was obviously there for me to examine as a gift, like a cow or an ox.”

Reporters reminded Karzai that “Americans do not give women as gifts, even to foreign leaders.”

“Perhaps this is why your standing in the world is so low,” Karzai said. “You have 300 million people in your nation. Surely you have a few women who could be donated to world leaders for diplomatic purposes. And surely they do not all resemble your Madelaine Albright.

“But to come back to the situation at hand, there are only two possibilities. One is that your Sarah Palin was intended as a gift, like a camel or a horse, out of respect for my position as President of Afghanistan.

“The other,” Karzai continued, “is that you took a sovereign leader of a sovereign nation and used him as a prop for a photo opportunity for the mindless circus that is your Presidential election.

“I think this would be even more insulting to me, and to my nation, than the fact that you offered us an aging woman as a present. I hope that this is not what your purpose was. Maybe Condoleeza Rice is still available?"