In yesterday’s NYT mag inteview, Deborah Solomon hurls fastballs at Bell Curve author Charles Murray:

For nearly two decades, you’ve been at the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank in Washington. Why would a self-declared libertarian, the party that glorifies individualism, spend his career on the dole? But I am not spending my career on the dole. People are voluntarily giving money to A.E.I. — there is no government money — because they think the work we do is valuable.

Aren’t think tanks basically welfare for intellectuals? Actually, the interesting thing there is the extent to which it’s the think tanks in the last 15 years that have been producing the stuff that has had the most effect on the debate, as opposed to colleges.

What do you make of the fact that John McCain was ranked 894 in a class of 899 when he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy? I like to think that the reason he ranked so low is that he was out drinking beer, as opposed to just unable to learn stuff.

What do you think of Sarah Palin? I’m in love. Truly and deeply in love.

She attended five colleges in six years. So what?

Now we turn to Wake Forest University political science professor David Coates, who wrote (unposted) an anti-Palin column in yesterday’s N&R:

Yes, Alaska is close to Russia —- but that no more makes her a foreign policy expert than me, just back from a vacation in Europe….

For all the claims about change and reform in Washington, political life under a McCain-Palin administration would be more of the same.

The same Republican trickle-down economics that have left so many of us struggling for jobs and savings. The same deregulation and small government philosophy that has given us the subprime loan crisis and a wave of house repossessions. The same immigration policy that has given us ICE raids in the night and the demonizing of the entire Latino community. The same politics of division and intolerance.

Rush Limbaugh loves her. He says she’s a “babe.” That should be warning enough.

Fair enough, Wake Forest is a private college, so you could that Professor Coates isn’t living ‘on the dole’ any more than Charles Murray is. But pardon me if I’m slightly skeptical that he’s one of us.