To get journalists to take Palin more seriously, she must learn to control her eccentricities, such as her outspokenness, family dramas of all types and a penchant for rambling in public. She makes it easy for the Tina Feys to mock her.

Henneberger couldn’t resist quipping that while Palin was in Evansville, “she could see Kentucky from her hotel window,” a twist on Fey’s lampoon of Palin in one memorable skit.

I asked Henneberger if she envisioned a day when the likes of the New York Times and the New Yorker might take Palin seriously.

“Never!” Henneberger shot back. “They write off that whole wing of the Republican Party. I don’t think they understand the appeal of culture conservatism. It’s too foreign and outside their experience.”