We've all seen the MediaMatters cataloging of Palin's North/South Korea slip and her ridiculous overly protective reaction to it. It's great comedy and, as the best of it always does, says so much more about her and most especially her backers than it does about the people who paid a passing glance.
So here's the thing to think about while Ex-Governor Run-on-sentence says people jumped all over her for making a slip of the tongue by calling North Korea our ally against South Korea:
I of course think we should be lenient about simple slips of the tongue and mix-ups and malapropisms. Especially in a society that demands immediate and continuous response. I'm a big Joe Biden fan and he occasionally makes a slip and lives with the characterization of a gaffe machine despite being an intelligent and thoughtful person.
But here's the thing: in that little radio interview do you think that, if the host hadn't corrected her, she would have kept saying North instead of South? Do you think she would have gone the whole interview saying North? How long would it be, if ever, that she realized her goof? Do you think a cynical or unfriendly radio host could have gotten her to lay out an entire doctrine - based on complete misunderstanding and no doubt involving several attempted and failed Reagan references - based on siding with North Korea over South Korea?
I do. And I think the reason so many web sites - including her own - are jumping to defend her over a non-story are that they think so too.
This is why intellectual curiosity has become so rare a commodity. Something to be mocked and chastised. We're fed people who can just be given two input values: the black and the white. From there the stump speech writes itself. Doesn't matter if it's real, doesn't matter if it's played out. There's two eastern countries: tell me which is the communist one and I'll take it from there.