Fairness To Sarah Palin

I am the first to criticize Sarah Palin, but most of what has really stuck seems unfair.

First, on the Daily Show recently, they said that she couldn't list the countries in North America. First of all, if you look up North America in Wikipedia, there are 41 countries listed, so it's not just the US, Canada, and Mexico. I believe the actual question was not which countries are in North America, but rather which countries are part of NAFTA, of which the correct answer would have been Canada and Mexico. I have to admit, I wouldn't have known that either. Obviously Mexico is the one that gets all the attention, but what about the smaller countries just south of Mexico like Belize or Guatemala? What about all of the Carribean countries? They are not part of NAFTA, but I would hardly consider that something any idiot would know.

Also, there was the thing about not knowing what the vice president does every day. The thing is, there aren't any official daily duties for the vice president. The VP breaks ties in the senate and if the president dies, the VP takes over. When you ask someone what the VP does every day, it's not easily defined, and it's unfair to jump all over her for her response.

Finally, it has now come out that the issue with her not knowing that Africa was a continent and not a country was just made up.

I think this is primarily the result of a partisan Democratic smear. Before she ever did anything, all of the "liberal" bloggers began attacking her for being unqualified. For the entire first week after she was nominated, every single post at Daily Kos was an attack on her. Essentially, they set the narrative in the blogosphere that Palin was unintelligent and unqualified, and eventually that was repeated so much that she was constantly put in a position where she had to defend her intelligence and qualifications.

I'm certainly not a fan of Palin at all, but I think that the things that were valid criticisms were set aside for more low-brow attacks. First of all, her abuse of power in Alaska was forgotten very early. When the story came out that she was found guilty of abuse of power, there was a little criticism, but that didn't fit the narrative of her being stupid, so it was cast aside, just like when her aides refused to comply with subpoenas. Also, there was hardly a stir when she wouldn't say that abortion clinic bombers are terrorists. The truth is that she is a far-right, fundamentalist Christian, and should be criticized as that, not as stupid or unqualified.