Our great national panic can finally come to an end.

No, not the oil spill — screw the Gulf Coast, forget about the economy and don’t even think of mentioning the wars in the Middle East.

I’m talking about Sarah Palin’s breasts.

Adam Carlson

You heard right?

They’re real.

Drum roll, please.

Brace yourself for the collective sigh of relief — the light of the conservative party has not — I repeat, has not — stooped to plastic surgery.

This is contrary to a glut of rumors — all stemming from far-left liberals, one assumes — that popped-up following the appearance of a certain Tight White T-shirt Photo.

Though the mind wonders: if Palin had gotten a little boost, and if she’d stayed in office long enough to finish up her duly-elected term as governor of Alaska whilst under the knife, would she have written it off as a work expense?

“Boobgate is all over the Internet right now because there are a lot of bored, idle bloggers and journalists with nothing better to talk about,” our Lady of Wasilla confessed to Greta Van Susteren during a recent interview.

So does that classify me as a bored, idle journalist? Almost certainly.

But here’s the thing, Sarah — Can I call you Sarah?

After all your airtime, I do feel as if I’ve gotten so close to you — it’s not that we’ve got nothing better to talk about. It’s that you are the thing.

You’re it, honey.

In a 24-hour news cycle, Palin’s become the dreamed-of Holy Grail because she generates content constantly.

Boobgate is just her latest hot-off-the-presses scandal, the latest in a lengthy sequence including Johnstongate (as in Johnston, Levi Johnston), Bridge-to-Nowheregate and Governorgate.

Hers has been a career of follies, it would seem.

Oh, yes, sure, all politicians are a bundle of follies by nature!

But what’s so great, so perfectly and truly wonderful about Sarah Palin, is her utter refusal to stay away from the limelight.

She stumbles, and the whole world watches.

The pattern, as the latest blunder finds its way around the cable news channels, has become almost automatic:

Keith Olbermann rages, Rachel Maddow smirks, Bill O’Reilly defends, Glenn Beck dismisses and Greta Van Susteren — whose husband, John Coale, has worked with Palin on a possible ’12 presidential bid — apparently helps clean up.

All the while Palin chirps away, spunky as ever, proudly waving that rogue banner she lifted from John McCain.

It seems the poor man has simply forgotten he ever owned the thing to begin with: out of sight, out of mind, apparently.

Will she make a viable presidential candidate? Conventional wisdom would say no, not yet anyway — her spunk is verging on silly, and that banner she’s waving has begun to look frighteningly like possibility, not inevitability.

But don’t despair, Palin-fans and Palin-haters alike.

Regardless of the outcome two years from now, we all win.

If she triumphs, she’ll doubtless be granted an even larger stage in an even larger limelight from which to fail.

And if she not?

…I think I hear Wasilla calling.