The short form of a good argument

Law professor Ann Althouse: "By her own words, Sarah Palin is dumb."

Althouse thinks there's evidence for that in Palin's recounting of the setup for her embarrassing interview with Katie Couric, because in her book, Palin says she felt pushed into talking with Couric rather than some other network newsperson, and because the interview was wrongly billed by one McCain aide as a chance for two working mothers to empathize with each other.

Althouse is miffed because by her lights, Palin was too subservient to her running mate's staff, and that subservience somehow proves she was out of her depth or one shot short of a double espresso

(What's funny is that Palin is also accused of being ungrateful to the McCain campaign-- so which is it? Palin the ignorant lickspittle or Palin the uppity candidate who refused the place she was given? Do dumb people confound platoons of hostile fact-checkers while getting sizable advances for their memoirs? Why does snark aimed at Sarah Palin seem to richochet off her wrists as though Lynda Carter had loaned her the Wonder Woman bracelets? And just who thinks the McCain campaign was run by political geniuses?).

Fortunately, the people who commented on that Althouse post made points that their law professor hostess should have.

Not content to comment on the Althouse blog, Ace then weighed in with a common-sense rebuttal: "I think [Althouse's] Sisters Gotta Do It For Themselves analysis overlooks a major point: "Sarah Palin...acted as a subordinate to John McCain because she really was a subordinate to John McCain."

That makes sense to me. And Ace has some trenchant reader commentary from his readers, also. He and his peeps are a lot more fun than the earnest but curiously misguided Althouse.