Now that wasn't so painful, was it Andrew Malcolm?

Country Fair has been mocking Laura Bush's former flak for months now, as he has studiously avoided detailing just how wildly unpopular and disliked his fave pol, “superstar” Sarah Palin, really is. It's true that the partisan, Obama-hating LA Times blogger pretty much writes an item every week trying to convince his right-wing readers that Americans just can't stand the president. On that front, Malcolm is positively obsessed with polling data and combs over results, earnestly spinning any result. (And yes, Malcolm often has to butcher the facts in order to make them fit his beloved narrative.)

But publicly acknowledging that poll after poll has shown Palin continues to be an almost comically unpopular politician? On that front, poor Malcolm just hadn't been able to work up the courage.

Until today.

Perhaps pushed by his Times editor to acknowledge the latest round of dismal Palin polls, Malcolm managed to type up these tepid words:

Now, about those Palin poll numbers, usually characterized as abysmal. A new CBS News poll finds that after all the negative press, an impressive 24% (think that'll get Palin-haters going?) of its sample views her favorably.

CBS found that a mere 38% view Palin unfavorably, a whopping three-point improvement from her 41% unfavorable rating in January. By comparison, Gallup recently found Reid's unfavorable rating to be 45% and Nancy Pelosi's unfavorable rating to be 54%. So how's that healthcare change working for ya?

Yes, it's impressive that just 24 percent of Americans have a favorable impression of Palin. That pretty much says it all, doesn't it? Malcolm has spent lots of time and energy in recent months pretending Obama is wildly unpopular, as his approval rating hovers around 50 percent. But according to the GOP human talking point, it's impressive that Palin's favorable rating is stuck at 24 percent.

Meanwhile, here's a nugget Malcolm missed [emphasis added] :

[A] majority, 51%, say that if Sarah Palin campaigns with a candidate, it will make them less likely to support that person. Only 25% say it will make them more likely.

And buried in the CBS News poll, we discover that among women, Palin's favorable rating stands at an atrocious 21 percent.