Amy Poehler's new book discusses her fearlessness, including rapping a song as Sarah Palin, with the real Sarah Palin sitting on set.

Amy Poehler has written a new book, much like fellow SNL alum Tina Fey before her, that discusses her life and what she has learned along the way.

On of those things was to overcome her sense apprehension and to courageously move forward with decisions that others might have balked at.

One of those decisions occurred on Saturday Night Live during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Here is more courtesy of The New Yorker: 

“I like picking fair targets,” Poehler writes in “Yes Please.” This means avoiding jokes that feel “too mean or too lazy.” The most satisfying example of this, perhaps—a perfect deployment of satire—was her Sarah Palin rap, which she wrote, with help from Seth Meyers and Andy Samberg. The conceit was that Palin had planned to do a rap number about herself but had backed out of it, and that Poehler casually agreed to pinch-hit. “One, two three!” she yelled. She presented, in lyric form, the nightmarish essence of the 2008 Palin campaign experience (“When I say Obama, you say Ayers! I built me a bridge, it ain’t goin’ nowhere”; “I got a bookish look and you’re all hot for teacher”), as Palin gamely and helplessly played along, trying to look cool and comfortable. The fact that Poehler did it while nine months pregnant—fully committed, technically perfect, firing finger guns at a moose and doing Cypress Hill-style la-la-las—felt like the ultimate out-mavericking, combining Palin-style trappings of macho-feminine power with humor and smarts. The sketch was scathing but ostensibly respectful, her performance relentless and irresistible. Watching the rap now, years later, the Palin era over, you still laugh and cry with admiration. When she growls, “I’m an animal, and I’m bigger than you!” you feel it. Poehler had her baby a week later, and she watched “Weekend Update” from her hospital bed. 

While not as iconic as Tina Fey's Sarah Palin impression, Poehler's Palin rap was a real show stopper, made even more memorable by the fact that Palin gamely tried to play along despite the fact that her eyes betrayed her realization that she had suddenly stepped off into the deep end of political parody.

And with lyrics like this who can blame her:

i'm jeremiah wright cause tonight i'm the preacha 
i got a bookish look and you're all hot for teacha 
todd lookin fine on his snow machine 
so hot boy gonna need a go between 
in wasilla we just chill baby chilla 
but when i see oil lets drill baby drill 

my country tis a thee 
from my porch i can see 
russia and such 

For those who may have missed this amazing television moment,  take a moment to enjoy the incredible, and very pregnant, Amy Pohler, and her incredibly naive victim by clicking here.