Mark Twain vs. Sarah Palin

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

-Mark Twain

Couric: In preparing for this conversation, a lot of our viewers … and Internet users wanted to know why you did not get a passport until last year. And they wondered if that indicated a lack of interest and curiosity in the world.

Palin: I’m not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world.

No, I’ve worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life until I had kids. I was not a part of, I guess, that culture. The way that I have understood the world is through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me a lot of perspective on the world.

Couric: And when it comes to establishing your worldview, I was curious: what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?

Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.

Couric: But, like, what ones specifically? I'm curious.

Palin: All of 'em, any of 'em that have been in front of me over all these years.

Couric: Can you name a few?

Palin: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where, it's kind of suggested and it seems like, 'Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C. may be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska?' Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.***


You mean the great diverse and historic city of Wasilla?? The capital meth of Alaska? That is the microcosm of America? If she thinks only wealthy people travel she is mistaken. And if she did learn so much from reading why can't she name any of the material she reads? If you are going to make reading a substitute for experience it would be a good thing to actually read something of value. I do not think Palin is curious or even cares that much about international relations. And that lack of intellectual engagement or curiosity is not a good thing when trying to govern a country that is involved heavily around the world.

This is the prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness that comes with vegetating in one little corner of the earth as Mark Twain stated...