Profiles in Ignorance: How America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber

by Andy Borowitz

Palin decides to flaunt her knowledge of American history. In his review of the book, in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Michael D. Schaffer inventoried its avalanche of factual errors. Palin refers to John Adams as a “leading participant” in the Constitutional Convention, in Philadelphia; this could have been true only if Zoom had existed in 1787, since Adams was 3,500 miles away, serving as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James’s. In a similar vein, she defends her opposition to the separation of church and state by noting that Benjamin Franklin proposed opening each session of that same convention with a prayer; she omits the bothersome fact that his idea wasn’t adopted. At one point, though, she does follow historical precedent: she asserts that “patriotic Americans” aren’t being racist by attacking Obama’s policies because they are merely advocating “smaller federal government and a return to federalism—otherwise known as states’ rights.” Here she reproduces the white supremacist dog whistle that Ronald Reagan used in his 1980 speech near Philadelphia, Mississippi. The Philadelphia where Reagan appeared left a deeper impression on Palin than the Philadelphia where John Adams didn’t.