Speaking American so easy, ‘even toddlers learn to do it,’ Palin says

Responding to mockery she faced after saying that immigrants should learn to “speak American” if they want to live in the U.S., Sarah Palin is arguing that she has been unfairly maligned by the media.

The former vice presidential candidate insists that her demand is neither cruel nor outlandish, because learning to speak American is so easy that even she learned how to do it when she was just a toddler.

“Lookie here, when I learned to talk American — Americanese, if you want to sound all hoity-toity about it — I was just a little pipsqueak in diapers, so how hard can it be?” Palin said in an interview with PBS’s Oscar el Gruñón. “So don’t tell me that a 50-year-old grape picker from Mexico with a perfectly good noggin can’t learn American by watching ‘Sesame Street’ and reading the words printed on the back of a box of Lucky Charms cereal, just like any normal kid.”

Palin also says that supporters of a bilingual society underestimate the aptitude of immigrants.

“Just the other day, I met an immigrant family from Scotland who could speak really good American,” she said. “Actually, I think they could speak American even gooder than me.”