The more interviews Gov. Palin grants, the less intelligent she sounds.

CBS aired a mind-numbing interview yesterday in which the governor assured Katie Couric that, though she couldn’t name a single magazine or newspaper, she’s been reading a “vast variety of sources.”

Variety, by definition, is a diverse assortment. Unless you’re reading an unusually eclectic range of publications — say, Rolling Stone, Biology Today, Nudists R Us and Homeschoolers Unite — there is no need to qualify the noun. The only reason to utter such a redundant phrase is if you can’t think of a single publication to mention. If TIME, Newsweek, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Financial Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Economist, the New Yorker and the Atlantic all have escaped your mind — if you can’t even recall the name of your local daily newspaper — then you just might be inclined to compensate by describing your reading materials as “vast.”

Couric pushed for details, asking, “Like what ones specifically? I’m curious–”

“All of ‘em,” Palin responded. “Any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.”

That’s an interesting strategy. If you can’t recall a single publication, just say you read them all. Which is, of course, impossible. There is no way you’d have time to do any gubernatorial work if you were reading all the magazines and newspapers in existence.

(As a side note, we resent the passive voice she used, saying she’s read “any of them that have been in front of me…” This suggests that, rather than actively seeking out news, Palin glances at the publications aides shove under her nose.)

Palin made a number of other rhetorical mistakes. For example, speaking about global warming, she said, “Well, we’re the only arctic state, of course, Alaska, so we feel the impacts more than any other state up there…”

Some words can be made plural. Consequences. Effects. Ramifications. But impact never needs or permits an s. It can convey multi-faceted consequences just as it is.

That comment was followed by a clear low point, in which Palin attempted to soften her previously-stated belief that global warming is not man-made.

There are man’s activities that can be contributed to, uh, the issues that we’re dealing with now with these impacts. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate, because the world’s weather patterns are cyclical and over history, we have seen changes there, but, um, it kind of doesn’t matter at this point…

It renders a listener speechless for a moment.

It’s correct to say human activity contributed to global warming. Or you can attribute global warming to human activity. To contribute means to play a significant part in producing something. To attribute means to credit something as resulting from a specified cause, to ascribe. In this case, it seems Palin was trying to say that global warming can be attributed, in part, to human activity. But she couldn’t quite come up with the word. Close but no cigar.

Palin also got her blame wires crossed. She meant to say, “I’m not going to blame changes in climate solely on man’s activities.” When you’re casting blame on someone, you begin by naming the problem and then you name the person responsible. I’m blaming this mess on you. I’m blaming global warming on humans. To blame humans on climate change makes no sense. It suggests that our presence is problematic, resulting from rising temperatures. (Unless warmer weather leads to increased breeding?)

Later in the inteview, Couric asked Palin about her stance on abortion. Should the victim of rape or incest be allowed to get an abortion? “Personally, I would counsel the person to choose life despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in.”

Yes, we’re talking about a hypothetical person, which can lead to forgivable pronoun confusion, but the singular-plural disagreement is harder to excuse in this case because the gender is established: Only women get pregnant. Just two words pass between Palin describing “this person,” singular, and her use of a plural pronoun, “themselves.”

The lack of mathematical recall is horrific, horrific.