Transcript Breakdown: Sarah Palin's Debut on the O'Reilly Factor

Among other highlights of the hourlong interview: Palin compares herself to a grizzly bear

How could an hour-long Sarah Palin interview go unremarked, given that everything she does--from scribbling out McCain's name on a visor, to blacklisting Alaska bloggers and ambushing William Shatner--causes a five-alarm media frenzy? This interview, originally broadcast on November 19-20, failed to pick up much notice the first time around, and is hardly getting more attention during the vacation week.* Here's a cribsheet:

*[Sentence corrected to reflect that the interview originally ran in November.]

Palin on Reading

O'REILLY: Couric asked you an easy question [about what magazines or newspapers Palin reads] and you booted it,
governor.

PALIN: I sure did.

O'REILLY: Why did you boot it? I mean, if somebody asks what do you read? I say I read the, you know, "New York Times," "The Wall Street Journal," "The Washington Post." I can reel them off in my sleep. You couldn't do it?

PALIN: Well, of course I could. Of course, I could.

O'REILLY: Why didn't you?

PALIN: It's ridiculous to suggest that or to say that I couldn't tell people what I read. Because by that point already it was relatively early in that multi segmented interview with Katie Couric, it was quite obvious that it was going to be a bit of an annoying interview with the badgering of the questions...I think if most normal Americans were put in the same position that I was there, they'd probably look at her and have thatproverbial eye roll and say are you kidding me?

O'REILLY: If they knew.

PALIN: Are you suggesting that I don't read?

Palin on Skeletons in Her Closet

PALIN: You know what I thought they were going to come after me for?
Getting a "D" in a college course 22 years ago. That was the big
controversy in my little world. That was the skeleton in my closet. Crap.
Once the media finds that out.

Palin on Populism

O'REILLY: You're a populist.

PALIN: A populist, yes.

O'REILLY: Do you know what they're calling you now?

PALIN: No.

O'REILLY: Evita.

PALIN: Well.

O'REILLY: Eva Peron.

PALIN: Uh-huh.

O'REILLY: That's who they're calling you now.

Palin on Protecting Her Family

PALIN: After a year of getting clobbered by the media, capitalizing on people who will make things up, there does come a time in any mama's heart and gut where they're going to say no, no, no. You're picking on my kids. You're picking on my family. I'm going to set the record straight. My guttural instinct kind is kind of like a mama grizzly bear. You touching my cubs, you're touching my kids.

Palin on Being Qualified for President

O'REILLY: Do you believe that you are smart enough, incisive enough, intellectual enough to handle the most powerful job in the world?

PALIN: I believe that I am because I have common sense. And I have, I believe, the values that are reflective of so many other American values. And I believe that what Americans are seeking is not the elitism, the kind of a spinelessness that perhaps is made up for that with some kind of elite Ivy League education and a fact resume that's based on anything but hard work and private sector, free enterprise principles. Americans could be seeking something like that in positive change in their leadership. I'm not saying that has to be me.