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HOST: Is the news media doing a good job—are you getting a fair shake, are the Republicans getting a fair shake this year?

PALIN: I don't think they're doing their job when they suggest that calling a candidate out on their record, their plans for this country, and their associations is mean-spirited or negative campaigning. If they convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.

Como refere Ed Brayton, esta afirmação de Palin é:

Utter ignorance. The first amendment prevents the government from punishing you for what you say. It does not mean that others, including the media, can't criticize what you say. In fact, the first amendment presumes that criticizing and questioning politicians is so important that it is doubly protected, both under the free speech clause and the free press clause.

A ignorância assustadora e o anti-intelectualismo básico de Palin não assusta apenas jornalistas,  como já referi assusta muito cientistas como Jerry Coyne que  no Philadelphia Inquirer escreveu sexta-feira um artigo absolutamente imperdível:

Enough already. I bit my tongue when I heard that Sarah Palin believed that dinosaurs and humans once lived side by side and that she and John McCain wanted creationism taught in the public schools.

And I just shook my head when McCain derided proposed funding for a sophisticated planetarium projection machine as wasteful spending on an "overhead projector."

But the Republican ticket's war on science has finally gone too far. Last week, Sarah Palin dissed research on fruit flies. (...)

This year's Republican campaign has consistently attacked the values of reason and logic that undergird our democracy. If anything has led to America's high standard of living and world preeminence, it's the idea that we can advance only with the best science possible.

When Palin declares that we don't have to know what causes global warming in order to fix it, she's not only exposing herself as a scientific illiterate; she's going against two centuries of American progress in technology, medicine and science. Trying to bond with the American people by taking pride in your ignorance and making science the common enemy - now that's a bridge to nowhere.