Alaska Governor Sarah Palin might prefer Baked Alaska, but for the time being, she'd better get used to Humble Pie.
As reports emerged from unnamed sources in the McCain camp that Sarah Palin could not understand that Africa was a continent and not a country, among other embarrassing geographic bloopers, she has jumped quickly to her own defense, saying of the source:
"That’s kind of a small, evidently bitter type of person who would anonymously charge something foolish like that, that I perhaps didn’t know an answer to a question. So until I know who is talking about it, I won’t have a comment on false allegations."
Speaking of small and bitter...
The night many of us first met Sarah Palin, she introduced herself to the world by talking trash about community organizers:
"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities."
...the media:
"But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."
...and of course, Barack Obama:
"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word "victory" except when he's talking about his own campaign. But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed ... when the roar of the crowd fades away ... when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot - what exactly is our opponent's plan...
Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit."
As someone who claimed to be the moral authority on what "real" Americans wanted and needed in an candidate, Palin is now reduced to playing the victim as the media she once targeted so shrewdly targets her with allegations that she dragged down the ticket.
"Well, you know, I don't think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit that I would trump an economic, woeful time in this nation that occurred about two months ago -- that my presence on the ticket would trump the economic crisis that America found itself in a couple of months ago and attribute John McCain's loss to me."
Perhaps McCain's loss has slightly less to do with the economy and more to do with the fact that the majority of the voters in this country live in the parts Palin deemed "anti-American":
"We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. We believe... we believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, um, pro-America areas of this great nation."
I assume if she doesn't count Washington, D.C., as one of the "wonderful little pockets," she doesn't count Manhattan either. Funny how un-American the two places that were the targets of terrorist attacks just seven years ago have fallen so swiftly in the eyes of patriotic, pro-American Sarah Palin. Then again, if she thought Africa was a country and couldn't be bothered to learn the nations in NAFTA, perhaps she doesn't quite understand that there are 50 United States, and that America's cities are equally as important as its small towns.
As my dad said yesterday, "How could you expect her to know Africa was a continent? She can't see it from Alaska."
I start to feel sorry for Palin when I see her own party "throwing her under the bus," but then I re-read her speeches and her interviews and remind myself that she threw my America under the bus. And suddenly, I don't feel so sorry for her anymore.