Really? I’ve no love for the woman, but I’d be very surprised if her IQ score weren’t well above average. This is a college-educated woman who had a relatively short, but reasonably successful, career in statewide politics. This doesn’t mean she’s a genius - and I think she’s very, very far from that - but I can’t believe that she’s just a flat 100.
She struggled for years through a battery of community and state colleges to amass enough credits for a Bachelors Degree. That doesn’t take any special intelligence.
I am also of the belief that incuriosity is a sign of low intellect, and Palin has an abundance of it.
I don’t believe there is any serious policy subject for which she has anything but the most superficial knowledge about, and even the knowledge she does have has only been acquired within the last couple of years.
I hope you are having fun at the Tea Parties.
Wow - you know, I hadn’t realized just how bizarre Palin’s education was. From wikipedia:
I’ve nothing against people who go to community colleges on their path to a BA - they’re cheap, they can correct deficiencies left by lackluster high schools, and they often have really good and dedicated teachers. Nor do I have anything against transferring colleges - I have friends and family who’ve done that. Sometimes an institution just isn’t a good fit, and there’s no shame in that.
But Palin went through four schools on her way to a BA. That’s … insane. It makes it all but impossible to form real relationships with profs or other students. It ensures that you’ll derive little or no benefit from any curriculum which is meant to last longer than a semester - classes don’t have time to “build” on one another as the profs intended. All you’ll get is, well, superficial knowledge in your field of study.
It looks like Palin went about as close as you can get to not going to college, and still come out with a BA. Unless she had some sort of family crisis, or serious illness, that speaks volumes to her concern for knowledge. (Even poverty wouldn’t explain the transfers - if you need to drop out for a semester to raise cash, that’s no reason to head to an entirely different school every year.)
I’d like to see a cite for the claim that she “struggled for years through a battery of community and state colleges to amass enough credits for a Bachelors Degree.” She did switch schools several times, but that’s not the same thing at all.
I do agree that one can generally get a better education by sticking with a single school. Without knowing why she switched schools though, I think the prudent course would be to reserve judgment on this matter. It would be kinda loutish to insist that she must have done so in order to scrounge up enough credits for a bachelor’s degree.
Person 1: “Sarah Palin is not as dumb as you think she is…”
Person 2: “Yeah. She couldn’t be…”
Heck, I never assumed her academic career meant she was dumb. I’m not even sure she is dumb. She sure talks dumb, though, and panders to a hooting audience who are, quite clearly, louts.
Fight the power, comrade!
Would it disturb you more if she was actually stupid, or just acting stupid?
I don’t think she’s dumb for spouting ignorant crap at teabagger conventions. Some people who have brains no doubt did the same - in fact speaking intelligently at a teabagger convention would probably get you lynched. I think the evidence of her stupidity was her inability to answer even the softest of questions during the campaign, and her inability to learn. Interviews are good publicity - I’m sure her handlers didn’t keep her away from them for fear she would intimidate the reporter.
And BTW, she didn’t exactly take rocket science classes in college. How could someone who supposedly studied journalism not be able to answer a question of what magazines she reads?
The answer I’d’ve liked from Palin re: “what magazines do you read?”
“I really like to go through *Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. Todd buys them all the time and I steal them, often before he gets to read them first. I like reading about American ingenuity and what crazy stuff is possible now, or five or ten years from now. Sometimes, though, I flip through old issues, though, and it makes me a little sad, because there were so many interesting ideas that just never happened, maybe they didn’t work out well, or nobody could make them affordable. Then I think about what could happen if the Democrats start pushing a lot of wild ideas and they fizzle out, doing more harm then good. Sometimes you gotta improve what you have instead of reaching for something new, just because it is *new. It’s being careful and realistic that makes me a conservative.”
lol
She started at Hawaii Pacific University, transferred to North Idaho College (a community college), thence to the University of Idaho, Matanuska College (another community college, near Wasila), and back to Idaho for one year.
I agree that it’s not definite evidence that she was a poor student, but I think it’s fair to say that getting educated was probably not one of her priorities at the time.
Acting stupid. Bush II managed to play the folksy outsider card even though he was the Yale-educated son of a former President and Director of the CIA- proof positive to me that he’s actually a pretty smart guy- and look at everything he managed to fuck up once in office.
No, it was Bush I – George Herbert Walker Bush – who was head of the CIA.
That’s what he meant.
I know. You were supposed to read it like this:
ETA: What AClockworkMelon said.
Just imagining Bush43 in charge of the CIA… Democrats getting waterboarded, the ACLU undergoing rendition to Syria, Cindy Sheehan in Gitmo…
Ah, I see what you two are saying. Yes, one can (and should) read it that way; but you do have to admit that the phrasing was sufficiently ambiguous to admit of my reading, at least on first glance.
I don’t think you’re an idiot for misreading it or anything, don’t worry. 
But its potential ambiguity didn’t even cross my mind until you pointed it out.
Incidentally, Palin left that college in Hawaii because she didn’t like being around Asians.