pdq ~ The Beatles are hardly examples of social mobility "in the US."

I'm very surprised that anyone involved with Mudcat would ever think such a thing, let along write it!

(For those not in the know: the Fab Four were/are citizens of the UK, not the US ~ from Liverpool, England, as a matter of fact.)

And to address your larger point: the fact that certain members of our society's tiny economic elite came from humble origins may demonstrate that no one is automatically excluded from the very limited number of opportunites for exceptional wealth, but has no bearing at all upon the unquestioned fact that we are experiencing a growing gap between a tiny class of the super-rich, and the vast majority of citizens who have become accustomed to "middle-class" status, but who are in actuality paycheck-to-paycheck working class, and getting poorer every day.

A thriving economy can only exist where most people can buy stuff. When unbridled greed has allowed the most overprivileged to grab up all the goodies for themselves, and the rest of us are left with little or no "disposable income," it hurts everyone. To reverse an old cliche, even the bad have to suffer with the good.

Back to Sarah:

I'm a little surprised at Joe Offer "giving her a pass" and accepting that she is truly more knowledgeable than generally acknowledged. I have heard and read enough of her airheaded talk to believe without a doubt that she is entirely innocent of a great deal of very basic knowledge that I learned in grade school, or learned outside of school during childhood from reading books and newspapers, looking at maps, etc.

What is scariest about her, to my mind, is not the right-wing platitudes that she repeats without truly understanding what the hell she's talking about. I mean, she recites the approved doctrine that she is "against socialism" while at the same time distributing fat oil-royalty checks to every Alaskan citizen, much in the same manner that she declares herself opposed to "Washington lobbying" and "earmarks" despite having been the nation's most successful small-town mayor in acquiring pork for little Wasilla ~ because she hired a Washington lobbying firm!

In other words, her mouthing of the right-wing platitudes she has been taught by rote does not mean that she will carry out conservative policies.

No, what is scary about Sarah is that she has absolutely no shame about her ignorance, never exhibiting the slightest self-doubt, even when she should stop and consider her uncritical sentiments before blabbing them out as though they were solidly established facts. This unjustifiable self-assurance is the main reason she always projects an air of conviction, no matter what kind of crap she is putting out. The effect upon any listener who doesn't already know more about a given subject than Palin does is to make such a listener much too likely to believe everything that comes out of her mouth.

Her massive self-confidence is at the very bottom of what makes her so magnetically attractive. It is not only unfortunate, but dangerous, that this political "strength" of hers makes her:
~ less likely than a normal person to stop and think, and to learn something new; and
~ very likely, and exceptionally able, to convince large numbers of followers of just about anything that she accepts as true.

And, oh yeah, Joe: do you really believe that attendance at a sequence of way-too-many backwater community colleges guarantees that a "student" will learn even one-tenth of the wisdom and knowledge that you acquired from those Jesuits?