Though we were heartened by Jessica Alba's recent kiss-off of Bill O'Reilly (her best performance since Into the Blue!), she's now been sucked back into a Fox News fight that's paying off with diminished returns.

Us has the scoop:

When a reporter approached her at an inauguration event last week, she tried to turn the tables on him by asking him what Barack Obama's greatest characteristic was. When the reporter said he felt uncomfortable answering because he is a journalist, Alba replied, "be neutral - be Sweden about it."

TMZ.com later called her a "ditz" and an "arrogant buffoon" for saying Sweden instead of Switzerland when referring to the neutral country during WWII.

We confess that we often suffer the same mixup: meaning to ask for a Swiss army knife, we'll be handed a perfectly useless (but tasty!) Swedish fish instead. However, Alba took to her Myspace blog to insist that Sweden is really what she meant to say:

I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately. I find it depressing that in the midst of perhaps the most salient time in our country's history, individuals are taking it upon themselves to encourage negativity and stupidity. Last week, Mr. Bill O'Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people...it's so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II if you want to see what I was referring to. I appreciate the name calling and the accurate reporting. Keep it up!!

Yes, well, at this "salient time in our country's history," we'll refrain from knocking Alba too hard, only lightly suggesting that perhaps some of those words don't mean what she thinks they mean. We're sure the actress could simply use a vacation—we'd just recommend that she double-check the location on her boarding pass.