The XX Factor: What women really think.

Sarah Palin Ignorance Update

For those who haven’t seen it yet, this clip of Fox News political correspondent Carl Cameron talking to Bill O'Reilly is rather extraordinary, and not only for what it reveals about Sarah Palin. Cameron reports that McCain campaign insiders have told him that Palin was unaware that Africa is a continent, not a single country; that she could not name the three signatories of the North American Free Trade Agreement; and that she had refused point-blank to prepare for those infamous Katie Couric interviews. 

But O’Reilly’s reaction is even more gripping than these revelations. Even as Cameron—a Fox reporter!—is talking, he keeps grasping wildly at the “all-criticism-of-Palin-is-snobbery” narrative. “She could be tutored!” he says at one point and gets Cameron agree that the real problem with the Couric interviews was the way the elite liberal media spun them afterward. My prediction: If the Republican Party and its pundits sticks to this interpretation of Palin’s performance, they’ll be out of the White House for the next decade, if not longer.