What -- oh, dear God what -- has the Internet wrought?

The sometimes-lamestream media debating whether the sometimes-lamebrain former governor of Alaska rolled her eyes in a debate with one of her critics in Homer? Not to criticize either the media or Sarah Palin, but this is just all around lame.

Palin's rolling her eyeballs is a story of such significance that CBS News would jump on it?

What would Walter Cronkite say? Who cares if Pain rolled her eyes, or if Palin's critic "really" was or wasn't a teacher, or if some reporters missed the fact Palin's father was a teacher, or, or, or ...

What do any of these things have to do with, as Palin would say, "progressing" Alaska, or progressing the nation, or even, for that matter, progressing intelligent thought?

About the only thing of substance here is Palin's observation that a lot of the media -- of which she is now a big part -- is lame. Sad to say, for all of us, that part is true. If you doubt it, look no further than the reporters now tripping over themselves to hint at how they bravely cheated death by flying to Dillingham to interview Palin after she resigned as governor a little over a year ago and fled to husband Todd's commercial fishing site near there.

Their bravery has somehow also become "news" because of the death of former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and four others in the crash of a single-engine floatplane just north of Dillingham on Monday.

"I had to fly into Dillingham during the July 4th weekend in 2009 for an interview with Sarah Palin," writes Time magazine's Jay Newton-Small. "Coming down to earth is a little harrowing -- like landing in Kathmandu, which is at sea level after you've cleared the Himalayas at 30,000 feet. We weren't that high up, but Dillingham has no radar to help guide travelers in, so everything must be done off the plane's own gauges -- and those indicated little more than what was just beyond the pilot's eyesight."

OK, people, how about everyone stop worrying about Palin's eye-rolling, or lack thereof, and start concentrating on doing what reporters are supposed to do: Gather facts.

Fact one: Kathmandu is not at "sea level." It is nearly a mile high in Nepal, a landlocked country in Asia. (Hint, there's a little Internet thing called Wikipedia that can help you figure out this middling detail.)

Fact two: The Dillingham airport is ILS-equipped, which means an instrument landing system -- not radar -- is what guides those big airplanes called "jets" in for landing.

Fact three: Most flying is done "off the plane's gauges" which indicate a lot more than the "little ... just beyond the pilot's eyesight." The "plane's gauges" tell the pilot silly little things like a plane's air speed (so you don't land too fast and go off the end of the runway), attitude and altitude (so you have a better idea of where you are in space other than just near or far from the runway), and whether you've got the wheels down. The wheels, on many airplanes, are things beyond the pilot's eyesight, and it's a good idea to have them down when you land because wheels-up landings are called crashes.

All of these things, it seems, would be more important for people to know than whether Sarah Palin rolled her eyeballs, but apparently they're not.

This is the world as we know it now. God help us.

Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com.