T

OK, all you Sarah Palin-bashers, where are you now?

She has not held a full-time job in years, has not run for even the lowliest office, and has promoted such noncontroversial causes as patriotism, poetry and public service. Yet Caroline Kennedy's decision to ask Gov. David A. Paterson to appoint her to Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate seat suggests that she believes she is as well prepared as anyone to serve as the next senator from New York — and is ready to throw her famously publicity-averse self into the challenge of winning back-to-back elections in 2010 and 2012.

Actually, if all she ever does is spout nonsense about issues she knows nothing about, that will make her at least as qualified as half the people already there. At least it's nice to know The New York Times isn't in the tank for her:

They and several others, described a woman who is surprisingly down to earth: who carried sensible shoes in her bag for the walk home from a dressy event at Tavern on the Green; who declined a lift downtown when caught without an umbrella in a rainstorm, instead heading for the subway in a baseball cap; who does not shirk her periodic safety patrol duty, with its reflective vests and walkie-talkies, as a Collegiate School mom; who is an assiduous e-mailer, if not so fast at returning voice mail; who has a personal assistant, but does not use her as a gatekeeper the way so many not-so-famous people do; and who loves to play Running Charades, a version of the popular parlor game.

She has a personal assistant but does not use her as a gatekeeper! Why, she's just like me! How snide and reverse-snobbish I was being.