ARCANE MYSTERIES REVEALED ONLY TO A CHOSEN FEW!

Vanity Fair's Todd Purdum just published his big Sarah Palin article -- and William Kristol thinks he has Purdum dead to rights:

Here's a highlight of Purdum's reporting: "More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of 'narcissistic personality disorder' in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders--'a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy'--and thought it fit her perfectly."

Is there any real chance that "several" Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don't believe it for a moment. I've (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I've gone decades without "several" people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Um, Bill? If you Google the word "narcissist," the second result you get is the Wikipedia page for "Narcissistic personality disorder."

Here's the first paragraph of that page:

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the diagnostic classification system used in the United States, as "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy."

Not far below that are nine DSM-IV criteria for the disorder.

Bill, is it really so hard to imagine that several of Purdum's sources might have conducted such a search -- each one after, say, a particularly fraught meeting with Governor Palin?