Wall Street Journal: Sarah Palin Is An Idiot

Sarah PalinOK, the Wall Street Journal didn’t really say that Sarah Palin is an idiot, but they proved it in an exchange that leaves no other conclusion. The following tale of deceit is particularly interesting because both sides are members of Rupert Murdoch’s media family. The WSJ is the gem of financial newspapers, and Palin is the star of Fox News. So Palin is not being attacked by some “lamestream media” hack. This thwacking comes from the most respectable source that Murdoch commands.

The intra-News Corp cat fight began when prepared remarks Palin will make at a trade association conference were released by the National Review. Her speech will address recent actions taken by the Federal Reserve with which she takes issue. She orders Fed chief Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist” and oddly suggests that the U.S. should follow the economic lead of Germany. That’s odd because she and her rightist comrades generally portray anyone who offers European solutions to American problems as socialists and traitors. But here is where she proudly demonstrates her monumental ignorance of economic affairs:

Palin: [E]veryone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so.

There’s only one small problem with that statement. It simply isn’t true. It’s as false as death panels; as dishonest as $200,000,000 a day trips to India by the President; as unscrupulously fraudulent as “palling around with terrorists.” In other words, it’s just another day for Sarah Palin. Sudeep Reddy of the Wall Street Journal stepped up to correct the Tea Party Queen by presenting some actual facts:

Reddy: Grocery prices haven’t risen all that significantly, in fact. The consumer price index’s measure of food and beverages for the first nine months of this year showed average annual inflation of less than 0.6%, the slowest pace on record (since the Labor Department started keeping this measure in 1968). Even if you pick a single snapshot — say, September’s year-over-year increase in prices — that was just 1.4%, far better than the 6% annual increase for food prices recorded in September 2008.

Not content to leave dumb enough alone, Palin calls Reddy’s facts and raises some more lies. She took to her Facebook page to accuse Reddy of failing to read his own paper. Then she offers this quote from a recent WSJ story to support her position that food prices have risen in the past year:

Palin: The article 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.”

Notice that ellipsis Palin inserted after “supermarkets and restaurants?” Here is the complete segment with the portion she edited out in bold:

WSJ: An inflationary tide is beginning to ripple through America’s supermarkets and restaurants, threatening to end the tamest year of food pricing in nearly two decades.

Prices of staples including milk, beef, coffee, cocoa and sugar have risen sharply in recent months. And food makers and retailers including McDonald’s Corp., Kellogg Co. and Kroger Co. have begun to signal that they’ll try to make consumers shoulder more of the higher costs for ingredients.

So Palin just happened to cut out the part that affirmed that price inflation has been “tame.” And she also excised the context of the staple costs that have risen, which the Journal story makes clear was at the producer level, not the prices consumers pay. The point of the article that Palin quoted was that prices may rise in the future, but they have not risen in the past year as Palin claims.

Palin went to great lengths to ridicule Reddy and the Journal for what she regards as shoddy reporting. But upon closer examination it is Palin (who supposedly has a degree in journalism) who is mangling the truth and deliberately misrepresenting the content of the articles she cites. On her Facebook page she notes that…

Palin: Ever since 2008, people seem inordinately interested in my reading habits. Among various newspapers, magazines, and local Alaskan papers, I read the Wall Street Journal. […] Now I realize I’m just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper. I’m surprised a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal doesn’t.

Now Palin may be just a former half-term governor, a quitter, a ghost-written book hustler, and a current reality TV star, but even wealthy, narcissists like her can spew falsehoods and propaganda. Judging from the evidence above, if Palin can read a newspaper her comprehension skills (or her respect for the truth) are abysmal. And her attempt to malign “a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal” has not only failed, but has blown back into her face.

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7 thoughts on “Wall Street Journal: Sarah Palin Is An Idiot

  1. Sarah is interested only in power and fame, not the truth.
    (and that’s the truth)

  2. Ignorant and proud of it is no way to go through life lady…

  3. And the WSJ headline writer is an idiot, as well. The headline was a negative eye-grabber intended to catch they eyes of morons like Palin, who only read headlines and don’t actually read the articles to which they are attached. The WSJ, yet another wing of the NewCorps right wing propaganda machine, has an endless parade of negative economic articles (or in this case, headlines attached to articles that tell quite a different story) designed to further erode the public’s confidence in President Obama.

  4. The woman is an idiot but she is smarter than that moron w and could not possibly be worse than that fool. Having said that we do not need another stupid drunk from next door being the President of this country.

  5. I can’t get over the fact that Sarah Palin has her own reality tv show. Can anybody get a tv show in this day and age? And it’s glaringly apparent she is using it to gain more popularity so that she can run for president. The most chilling part is that with the way everybody worships reality tv stars, it’s just crazy enough to work. I’m not exactly an exorbitant liberal or anything, but I would think anybody with a little sense on whichever side of the political aisle should be able to discern why we would not want someone like her being in charge of the free world.

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