I Take It All Back
I know I’ve been pretty hard on Sarah Palin. I’ve said that I think she’s unprepared for the Presidency; I’ve made fun of the idea that she learns about other nations through osmosis; I’ve even questioned her energy expertise. I take it all back. I eat my words. I was wrong:
“Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, 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: What, specifically?
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.
Couric: Can you name a few?
Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news, too. Alaska isn’t a foreign country, where it’s kind of suggested, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?” Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.”
That’s a lot of newspapers! Did you know that there are 38 newspapers in Alaska alone? And Florida: one hundred and forty! I don’t even want to think about how many there are in New York or California. Even Wyoming has twenty one.
And that’s just the US. Imagine: there are forty one newspapers in Bangladesh, and twenty five in Nigeria; Mongolia only has eight, but they’re in Mongolian. I started counting the newspapers listed for Italy, but my fingers got tired.
I did wonder whether these lists are complete. I don’t know, but Sarah Palin does! She can just check them against the newspapers she reads “regularly”, and see.
Think of the number of languages Sarah Palin must know! I look at this page, for instance, or this one, and while I think they’re quite lovely, I can’t understand them at all. I certainly couldn’t read them. I am immensely impressed that Sarah Plain can.
I guess all that stuff about Putin rearing his ugly head and entering Alaskan airspace must have been part of the McCain campaign’s clever expectations management game. I, for one, will never underestimate Sarah Palin again.
Although this one sentence from her interview does tempt me:
“I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.”
