I ignited a small firestorm the other day with a column I wrote in the newspaper about Little Miss Mooseslayer, as I called Sarah Palin, Republican candidate for vice president. I was nearly consumed with blazing e-mails and scorching telephone calls, so now I am doing some soul-searching.

I’m asking myself, where did I go wrong? Was it in quoting her words about how cool it was gettin’ saved? Or about how God wanted a gas pipeline to be built?

That doesn’t seem right. She said those things, not me.

Maybe I went wrong in quoting the Statement of Faith from her church about non-believers going to damnation, but the same reservation obtains: It’s not me saying those things, it’s her church. I would never be so presumptuous as to declare that most of humanity will be forever damned for not believing like me.

Or maybe I was amiss in quoting the pastor who was standing next to her about how hundreds of thousands of people will pour into Alaska seeking refuge during the Biblical “last days.” There would be some merit in that, perhaps, since she didn’t say it, he did.

But then, nobody took me to task for such nitpicky little details. They were just flat-out furious that I would have a chuckle at the expense of the great and glorious Sarah Palin, whom they honor and revere far above any mere “community organizer,” even though, I expect, they never heard of her a week and a half ago.

It’s a funny thing: She is plainly the least qualified candidate for high office in my lifetime, falling well below the low standard set by Dan Quayle, for example, and yet such passion she inspires! Such devotion! Such oaths of allegiance! Such ravingly favorable comparisons to the very author of the Declaration of Independence!

The magnificent Sarah Palin: She believes in God, she fires guns, she rides a snowmobile, she’s against abortion. Who cares if she can pronounce some dumb foreign name like Eye-rack? She’s “ordinary,” as one of her fiercest defenders instructed me, as if that were the highest recommendation he could think of for the presidency, or vice presidency, of the United States.

We don’t want no fancy-pants elitist, is the idea. We want a down-home gun-shooter who takes the teachings of her church without a critical thought. In other words, we want someone just like us. How dare I poke fun at her and call her Little Miss Mooseslayer?

Boy, did I get scorched.