Chris already posted the video of the Couric/Palin exchange over what the Alaska governor reads, which went as follows:
Couric: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?
Palin: I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media.
Couric: What, specifically?
Palin: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years.
Where before, I humbly asked myself, have we seen such an omnivorous thirst for knowledge? And then it hit me: The moment in Rain Man when Tom Cruise, anxious to keep his brother busy, hands him a phone book. Raymond, played by Dustin Hoffman, attacks it as if he were an American literature student discovering the existence of Huck Finn. It's that way with Palin, too: Put something in front of her and she will excitedly devour it.
In a similar vein, a friend sends along the following Saturday Night Live video from many years ago, in which Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds, and French Stewart face off in a round of Jeopardy. The "final Jeopardy" question, my friend realized, is eerily similar to the Palin-Couric exchange: "Just write a number, any number, and you win." C'mon Governor: Just name a magazine, any newspaper or magazine and you win!
P.S. Kathryn Jean Lopez's response to the Couric/Palin chat was too good to ignore:
As soon as I saw it on CBS earlier (I trust most of you have better things to do with your time!), I knew the new conventional wisdom would be something like "she bans books and doesn't read." And sure enough. The e-mails are coming in. Obviously the governor of Alaska reads. And what it looked liked to me is the governor of Alaska decided she wasn't going to play along with Couric. Whatever she answered would be scrutinized for the next 24 hours for what she included and left off. So instead she let Katie badger her a little.
That's right, Kathryn: Should Palin have answered The New York Times, or National Review, or Newsweek, people would be scrutinizing her endlessly!
--Isaac Chotiner