In a speech last night, Sarah Palin recited a bunch of intelligent-sounding things someone wrote for her about the Federal Reserve’s controversial “quantitative easing” plan, but they weren’t all entirely accurate. For instance, Palin said that food prices have “risen significantly over the past year or so,” when, in fact, the past year has seen a relatively minuscule jump in food prices. When The Wall Street Journal’s Sudeep Reddy pointed out the error, Palin humbly admitted her mistake and corrected herself, and the story was over. Just kidding, she lashed out at him in one of her typically sarcastic Facebook posts.
That’s odd, because just last Thursday, November 4, I read an article in Mr. Reddy’s own Wall Street Journal … [which] noted that “an inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America’s supermarkets and restaurants…Prices of staples including milk, beef, coffee, cocoa and sugar have risen sharply in recent months.”
Ouch. Reddy, dude, you don’t even read your own paper? Are you literate at all? Even a “former [half-term] governor and current housewife” knows more about economics than you, an alleged economics reporter. How pathetic for you. Maybe you should be the housewife and Palin should be the economics reporter.
Wait a second, though. As Reddy and the Columbia Journalism Review’s Ryan Chittum notice, Palin used some ellipses to skip over a section of the Wall Street Journal passage she quotes. We wonder what she left out …
But that directly contradicts what Palin was arguing, and validates Reddy! When Palin realizes that she omitted this vital information, she is going to be so embarrassed for the first time ever.
Palin Responds to Real Time Economics and We Respond [Real Time Economics/WSJ]
Sarah Palin, Media Critic [CJR]
