[marsh2]

Many New Yorkers hate George Bush, for instance, and say similar things about his and Palin's lack of intellectual capability and curiosity about the wider world.

This is called class and cultural prejudice. The culture of the American West is more casual, more innovative, more robust and more enthusiastic. People talk with a different accent. They prize individualism and decisiveness. Outside of metropolitan areas, they tend to live in societies that are more homogenous as to race and ethnic make-up, but which may have a greater diversity of individual opinion. Eastern elites like to think of this as provincial so that they can discount people who may have different beliefs than they.

The more they put down Palin for her Western ways, the more they reinforce their own superiority and place at the top in the natural order of things.

[Clemenza]

I agree wholeheartedly, though is it wrong for this native “Easterner” to get annoyed at all the “casualness” that pervaded Seattle when I lived there?

[Mr. Jeeves]

Eastern elites like to think of this as provincial so that they can discount people who may have different beliefs than they.

Proof of your point, from the comments to the article on Forbes.com:

"Sarah Palin's governorship only demeans Alaska and all the hunters, inebriated fisher-folk and Inuit who elected her to that office."