I was scared about Sarah Palin's lack of knowledge about, well, civics.  Many were. But now we are slowly learning that the McCain people were totally freaked by her breathtaking ignorance.  McCain staffers had told certain Palin stories to Fox News reporter Carl Cameron, but it was "off the record".

Carl Cameron….  reveals that McCain aides were truly "shocked" at the "gaps in knowledge" Sarah Palin displayed once they were stuck with her.  He said that, in the most startling shortcoming, she actually didn't "understand that  Africa was not just a country, but a continent."  This led, among other things, to her asking how, in that case,  South Africa could be a separate country.  She also could not name all of the countries in North America, he said, not even the NAFTA partners.  And she did not know many of the basics of civics and local/state/national duties.  

But the "gaps" explain, Cameron said, why tensions erupted as McCain aides were truly alarmed by all of this –  yet Palin wanted to speak out freely.  So in the closing week or so, they reveal, she took to yelling and screaming at aides over her press clippings, even "tossing papers" around.  She was so out of touch she actually refused coaching before the Katie Couric interviews, then yelled at staffers for not preparing her better or warning her off the interviews.  "Temper tantrums," etc.  Then there were the clothes bills and greeting McCain aides in a bath towel….