It's Thursday. Sarah Palin is outraged.

I'd be getting Sarah Palin Outrage Fatigue if it weren't still so darn entertaining. Today the taxpayers of Alaska paid for Gov. Palin's PR staff to draft a response to a photo-shopped picture that subbed a right-wing radio host's face over that of one of the governor's kids. Apparently the snow-mobile off-season brings them not much else to do.

So, I get daily Google alerts about the college where I work, which bring me links to anything about our college posted on the Web. Mostly it's news articles, but occasionally we get the odd blog trashing us for something we've done past or present. And you know what we do? Read, delete. No wasting my time drafting and issuing a statement refuting the blogger's opinion. Why? Because I have more important things to do, one. But mostly because one of the Top Ten rules of PR is that you never never never never dignify a juvenile commentary with an official response. Why? Because then you're making a story where there wasn't one. (Note that the CNN.com story is not about the blog, but Gov. Palin's response to it.)

Unless, of course, you're an attention whore who ascribes to the belief that there's no such thing as bad publicity. Shady used car dealers swear by that logic - not governors of sovereign states who harbor higher political ambitions. Your name in a headline is not always a good thing.

If Gov. Palin wants to brand herself as a leader with gravitas and sober judgment, she needs to do one of two things: a) ignore this BS, like the current occupant managed to do to all those ass-hats who insist he's the Anti-Christ; or b) get a lower-level surrogate to respond for her. If Palin and her people insist on turning every Internet critic into a media opportunity (which will keep them quite busy), then she needs to employ a small army of attack dogs to do the dirty work. She should appear to be above this petty crap.

And, as I've written before, the surest way for Gov. Palin to prevent her family from being used as fodder for people who want to lampoon her is for she herself to stop using them as props. What's good for the goose, Governor.