Did Sarah Palin really think Africa was a country?
The story began the rounds just after the election, when one of Fox News’ autopilot ideologues listed with breathless surprise the flaws of a vice-presidential candidate his channel had just put so much effort into supporting. Among them, he said, was the fact that “she didn’t understand that Africa was a continent”. Maybe she was just confusing two big land-masses beginning with A, and, swept along by Luhrmann fever, meant Australia. Either way, the report produced an outraged squeal last weekend from Palin, who said the claim wasn’t true. She went on to damage her denial by railing against people who leaked details of her preparation for the one vice-presidential debate. “These guys are jerks,” she said. Indeed. They did, after all, work for her. But none of them was called Martin Eisenstadt, the man initially named by a rival channel as Fox News’ source. He turns out to have been a spoof Republican invented by two comics, who conned blogs and newspapers into believing that their ins
Did Sarah Palin really think Africa was a country?