One thing about Sarah Palin that has stood out for me is her dismissiveness of, and contempt for, those who are different from her. Her remark to Charlie Gibson about "big fat resumes" was dismissive of everyone who is accomplished in ways she is not. Her remark to Katie Couric, about how her parents never gave her a passport and told her to travel around the world, was dismissive of people who want to experience new things and learn about other places and cultures firsthand. Not everyone who gets a passport at an early age and seeks to travel abroad is a rich kid. Some people have to work for the privilege of traveling, and they do.

Joe Conason writes on Salon.com: "Palin's phony populism is as insulting to working- and middle-class Americans as it is to American women. Why are basic diction and intellectual coherence presumed to be out of reach for 'real people'?" The same applies to traveling and achieving things and building up big fat resumes. So-called average people can do all these things, and are doing so, every single day.

Well said. I believe she and the McCain campaign advisors are trying to turn her obvious deficiencies into supposed advantages, or make excuses for them. But it comes across as insulting, divisive and, yes, dismissive.

I'd also add her assertions that she is a true American, coming from hard-working small-town Alaska, as opposed to those "east coast elites" (or those foreign Americans born in exotic Hawaii with international families, perhaps?). I wonder how she intends to relate to the millions of ordinary Americans living in inner cities.

She doesn't inspire me as a unifying individual.

I thought it was funny that Palin was under the impression that passports are issued by parents. I mean, do we really want a vice president who doesn't understand even the most basic workings of the federal government?

I did like Roger Ebert's response to her "my parents didn't give me a passport" comment and her general anti-intellectualism/anti-anth­ingworthacrapism:
<link>

"My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe...

You don't need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world...

...There a lot of hockey moms who haven't seen London, but most of them would probably love to, if they had the dough. And they'd be proud if one of their kids won a scholarship to Harvard."