Sarah Palin's arrival in Ames, Iowa Friday played out exactly like the Daily Show predicted it would the night before. Palin isn't on the ballot in the straw poll there Saturday -- she hasn't even said she's a candidate for president -- but the minute she announced she'd be taking her bus tour through town, she threatened to suck away the media attention so desperately needed by several of the official Republican candidates. Samantha Bee predicted a Sarah Palin Vortex would engulf the hoards of reporters in Iowa this weekend.

Here's Bee trapped in the middle of her imaginary Palin votex:

And here, thanks to Slate's Dave Weigel, is what it really looked like:

And this:

As Weigel notes, she's "Clearly hating the attention."

Meanwhile, the poor guys who've spent millions of dollars and countless hours begging Iowans to pay attention to them must be fuming, maybe thinking of Palin in the terms Jon Stewart used--Mayor of...

The Daily Show clip:

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Elspeth Reeve