Fruit Flies? Seriously?

Sorry I'm late on this guys, I hopped off the Red Eye this morning, came home and took Samori to his football game. (They promptly smashed-off the Staten Island Hurricanes 26-0) Then I came home and crashed. Just woke up and saw Sarah Palin waxing anti-intellectual over scientific research. What a shock. I keep going back to that quote from Barack that these fools take pride in their ignorance. Others who are smarter than me are inflamed:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models -- what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? -- and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system -- precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

This is not a politician who will be president--like, ever. Here you have a white woman running for national office, who far from being seen as representative, is disliked by a shockingly high number of other white women. You can't win the White House that way. It's popular to assume that you don't pay any price for ignorance in politics. This is wrong. You don't pay an immediate price--but the long-term brand damage is real.