Once upon a time, there was a poor young woman called Palinderalla. She lived in a cold land called Alaska, which was short for "Alas, Carruthers", the first words spoken by the disappointed explorers who discovered it.

One day, she was looking at the sea when she saw a distant land on the horizon.

"What is that place?" she asked her secretary.

"That’s The Rest of the World. Non-Americans live there."

Palinderella said: "The world is such a big and interesting place, full of strange and surprising people. I wish that I had the power to destroy them and call it pre-emptive self-defense."

Then one morning, a letter arrived. It said that Prince John wanted a veep.

Palinderella looked up veep on the Internet and learned that it was a sort of deputy leader. If she become one, she could protect her land from the The Rest of the World with something called "nucular weapons".

"I would love to be veep," she said. "But I have nothing to wear."

Suddenly, a woman appeared.

"Are you my fairy godmother?" asked Palinderella.

"I’m not a fairy but you can think of me as your mother and your god from now on," said the woman. "I am Prince John’s campaign consultant. Now turn around." The woman inspected her. "We need to make some changes," she said.

The woman waved her magic wand and changed Palinderella’s cheap wardrobe into US$150,000 worth of designer outfits.

She waved her wand a second time and Palinderella’s secretary changed into a team of public relations experts in black Armani suits called Campaign Aides.

She waved her wand a third time and Palinderella’s family car turned into a private jet, ready to whisk her around the land.

The first stop was Prince John’s campaign office. Entering the room, Palinderella fell to her knees. "Thank you for choosing me. But tell me, was it my beauty? My brains? Or the fact that I can see The Rest of the World from my house?"

"None of those things," replied Prince John. "It is the fact that I am rich, old and male, with 13 houses and lots of cars. This makes me disastrously uncool. You are a poor, young, and female, with one house and one car. The Meeja will love you. Just watch."

Now The Meeja was a big dragon that dominated the land. And true enough, it was fascinated by Palinderella, and devoted tons of space to her.

All went well for Prince John and Palinderella, until one day, The Meeja asked Palinderella what she knew about The Rest of the World.

"I live next door to it," said Palinderella. "I can see it from my window. And if I become veep, I can protect us from it using nucular weapons."

"Nucular weapons?" said The Meeja, realizing that if she couldn’t pronounce the word "nuclear" correctly, Palinderella must have been chosen merely to raise Prince John’s ratings.

"This is an insult," The Meeja said. "I’m too smart to be taken in by a trick like that."

But then The Meeja realized it didn’t have any votes. Only members of the public had the vote. And no one knew how smart or otherwise the voters were.

Yet they were the only ones who could finish this story. "Uh-oh," said the dragon. "Everybody cross your fingers."