There were no houses available in Tuscany

David Brooks on why the "liberal elite" despises Sarah Palin:

"People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart* think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany."

My last post, which I'm going to repost in part, because I think it's relevant, and because, this being my blog, I can do this if I feel like it:

"I don't believe anyone's asking that Sarah Palin identify all the lettuces available at the Union Square Greenmarket, or to reflect on how accurately "Gossip Girl" depicts the lives of Manhattan private-school juniors. What's off-putting is the deification of ignorance, ignorance of material that would be central to her job if elected. It's not so much that she hasn't met foreign heads of state as that she lacks the sort of passionate knowledge of who those leaders are that you'll find among high school debaters across the country."

While you can always dig up some especially vulgar Democrat who thinks the problem with Palin is that she's never played tennis at the club in Connecticut with Muffy and the gang, or that she was never editor of the Harvard Crimson, or a sound byte from a gender-studies professor who should maybe spend a bit of time amongst people who are not in gender-studies before formulating sound bytes for the nationwide press... the fact is that if you're assessing overall what liberals mind (and I feel I'm being addressed, even though I don't tend to consider myself a liberal), it's the same thing as what Brooks and the sensible conservatives he mentions object to: Sarah Palin is unqualified to be president. She was picked because what she symbolizes and how she looks would 'excite the base,' but the stakes in this election are too high to intentionally elect a figurehead or an unknown.

An additional problem for some, on the left and right, is the fear that populism can, as it tends to do, switch from a good-faith effort to make life better for the bulk of Americans into an all-out denunciation of anyone suspected of not putting America first, from "elites" (Jews, gays, anyone who's been to college) to "community organizers" (blacks) to "cosmopolitans" (gays), and so on. Some are already hearing this sort of coded language. Others think those who hear something other than the candidate's exact words are paranoid. So be it, but again, consider the initial question, that of qualification, knowledge, or if you'd prefer, experience.

*I will have a post later, though maybe not later today, about what it means to have "never been in a Walmart," and why that's a flawed way to judge elitism. But more on that another time.