Remember how Sarah Palin said that she explored foreign countries through books and how implausible that was?
Now it turns out that she can’t even name any newspapers or magazines that she reads reqularly. Pressed by Katie Couric, she said she reads ‘all of them, any of them.’
In a 2006 Pew poll, only 40 percent of Americans said that they read a newspaper “yesterday.”
So Palin is in the 60% and not that unusual. What I mind about her is that she keeps trying to bluff her way past such questions and doesn’t just admit the truth. Does she think the American people won’t vote for her because she doesn’t read?
Bush admitted that he does not read the newspapers but rather is read to by Condi Rice and Andy Card, as though he were a toddler. And Americans elected him president twice.
Crotchety Harlan Ellison is angry that 27 undergraduates he addressed at UCLA did not understand his reference to ‘the emperor’s new clothes.’ He thinks they read Hans Christian Anderson in their spare time for fun? Most Americans don’t read many books any more.
The 2000 census found that only 43% of Americans read a book that year.
Indeed, if the US public discovers that Palin does not read books or newspapers, they may vault her over McCain and just make her president and have done with it.
God forbid that someone should lead the country who knows what they are talking about. They might a) be less easily fooled by the con men among the lobbyists.
By the way, despite what Palin said about Russian incursions into US airspace over Alaska, NORAD denies there have been any such incidents.