You may like Sarah Palin, you may not. (Full disclosure: I don’t.) But there is one concrete, indisputable fact: she tried to riff on Paul Revere and messed up. She was trying to answer a question, tripped up on her words, tried to recover. But it wasn’t a success.

This happens to people – especially people who have cameras pointed at them – all the time. It doesn’t make them ignorant, or a fool. It means they stumbled over their words. It’s OK.

Here’s what’s not OK: pretending that you did exactly what you meant to do.

Remember what Miss South Carolina did when she had a similar moment a few years back? She owned it. She laughed it off, got a do-over and earned a ton of admiration.

Palin took a different tack. She denied that she’d erred and proclaimed that she was the victim of a “gotcha” question. Her legions took up the cause at Wikipedia and in the press. Which brings us to the bigger issue here.

At some point, America, we’re going to need to grow up.