... you know, Sarah Palin is such a rube that she can't possibly know how much these elitist clothes cost. She's not into vanity at all - not a former freaking beauty contestant. She has no idea what this stuff goes for! She's a commoner, dammit! Commoners can't tell expensive clothes from wolf pelts! They pay attention to warmth, and that's it!

is not that these people are hopelessly clueless and racist and ignorant. The sad part is that they will remain as such, so long as there are exploitative opportunists like Sarah Palin out there reassuring these people that being a clueless, racist, ignoramus is the American way!

These people gravitate toward Sarah because she makes them feel good about themselves - she fills them with hope and pride because she's just as stupid, uninformed, and unwilling to learn as they are, and she seems to be doing pretty well for herself.

She reaffirms their prejudices, coddles their ignorance, and restores confidence in their narrow-mindedness. She's a hero for self-described victims of political correctness - the kind of people who don't understand why it's wrong to assume all Muslims are evil terrorists.

It's sad. Very sad.

Not as if we need another example, but a comment as hopelessly stupid as hers should instantly disqualify her from holding any political office ever. A vice presidential candidate not knowing what the First Amendment says is a humiliating abomination for our entire country. She is a first class idiot, and likewise, so are the people voting for her.

I agree that blatant, out-in-the open racism will probably have a negligible effect on this election. However, this article misses the huge impact that institutional racism has had - the kind that allows "non-racist" white people to not trust Obama because of his scary associations, and who think he's some kind of secret subversive candidate who practices Islam and Black Liberation Theology at the same time. This has had a profound effect on the election, at least seemingly so.

It would be very interesting to see a well-done poll on people's reasons for voting for McCain. First off, I think more people are voting against Obama than for McCain. And I think a very healthy portion of those people are anti-Obama for largely false, baseless, or scurrilous reasons. The only reason these false, baseless, and scurrilous attacks are able to stick is institutional racism.

For those wondering why McCain picked a pro-life idiot over vastly more qualified pro-choice conservatives, it has nothing to do with whether the religious right would eventually vote for him. They'd vote for Amy Winehouse if she had an "R" next to her name. They would have voted for Lieberman or Ridge as well.

However, they would not have given money. The fundamentalist whackjob element of the GOP is not only its cultural center (or nadir), it's also the fundraising machine. You think those megachurches built themselves? The GOP needed the whackjob loot, and that's why Palin was picked over Lieberman or Ridge.

I can only hope Palin's star continues to rise among the whackjob fringe, because it will officially splinter the GOP into the two factions that are already drifting apart - the thinking, literate, adult conservatives versus Sarah Palin and the neo-fascist troglodytes.

Ever since the GOP started their ridiculous war on the media, GOP politicians go into every interview with the assumption that the media are trying to trick them. Palin is no exception. She honestly believes that legitimate questions about her knowledge base are really just thinly-veiled attacks on her. Couric never asked what she reads "up there in Alaska" but that is how Palin took the question, and that's why she misremembers it being asked that way. In her mind, Couric was saying "what do you hicks up there read?"

She lives in a fantasy world where knowledge and understanding is secondary to paper-thin appearances and down home folksiness. She clearly believes her own hype - and who can blame her? Thousands of adoring, drooling idiots showed up to her rallies and made her believe she's the second coming. Keep her in the news and let everyone see what a travesty and a sham she is. Intellectual curiosity is not something you just pick up - you either have it or you don't, and she clearly doesn't.

It seems the only kind of praise that can be mustered for Palin is that when she's prepared and told what to say, she sure can deliver a speech. The whole time she was running I thought she was better suited for press secretary than vice president, becuase she obviously knew nothing, but was capable of delivering a prepared speech. Kind of like a newsreader, which was her former career.

Calling Palin a politician is like calling Britney Spears a musician. They are neither ... they are performers, who do a decent job playing the part of what they're purporting to be. But ask Palin a substantive, off-script question, and you'll see the same look on her face as when Britney is asked about music philosophy and arrangement. Total cluelessness.

Palin is the perfect candidate for the Britney Spears era, in which performing the part is more important than actually being the part. The sad part is when they start to believe their own hype, and then come crashing down. Anyone want to set a line on when Palin shaves her head in public?