This is too serious to be nice about it
Remember, she has to be able to step in as president. Here she is explaining why she’s never met a foreign head of state and only got a passport in the last two years:
“The way that I have understood the world is through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me a lot of perspective on the world.”
- Sarah Palin
I thought anti-intellectuals disparaged “book-larnin’” as opposed to dirt under your fingernails. But, uh, OK, she has book-larnin’. Which books, pray tell?
COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?
PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —
COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.
PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.
OK, so she reads either ‘most of them’ or ‘all of them’ but can’t name even one of them. Fine. So could she, say, name some Supreme Court decisions? Apparently, she can name one. Supreme. Court. Decision.
Sarah, how many of your favorite publications can you name? How many Supreme Court decisions can you describe by topic, if not actually name? Loving vs. Virginia? Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad? Brown? Kitzmiller? Dred Scott? Barnette? Bush vs. Gore??? Ring any bells? (*snaps fingers repeatedly*)
Maybe Joe Biden will come off as a big ol’ meanie-head if he debates her and reveals her as the empty-headed fraud she is. So let’s have a proxy: I want Sheryl Kershenbaum to debate Sarah Palin!
UPDATES:
- One possibility that’s been suggested for her reticence about reading is that she does read, but material that wouldn’t play well. Here she is in 1995 with a John Birch Society magazine. McCain’s handlers may have looked at that and said “best not to mention it at all”.
- Interviewed much later in the warm embrace of Fox News, Palin rattled off a list of Supreme decisions and revealed that she reads New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Economist. She claimed that her inability to discuss these things during the Couric interview was that she was ‘irritated’ by the questions.