{"id":3170,"date":"2010-11-09T12:24:49","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T20:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3170"},"modified":"2010-11-09T12:58:43","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T20:58:43","slug":"wall-street-journal-sarah-palin-is-an-idiot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=3170","title":{"rendered":"Wall Street Journal: Sarah Palin Is An Idiot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SarahOK, 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”<\/em> hack. This thwacking comes from the most respectable source that Murdoch commands.<\/p>\n

The intra-News Corp cat fight began when prepared remarks<\/a> 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”<\/em> 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:<\/p>\n

Palin:<\/strong> [E]veryone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.”<\/em> In other words, it’s just another day for Sarah Palin. Sudeep Reddy of the Wall Street Journal stepped up<\/a> to correct the Tea Party Queen by presenting some actual facts:<\/p>\n

Reddy:<\/strong> 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 \u2014 say, September’s year-over-year increase in prices \u2014 that was just 1.4%, far better than the 6% annual increase for food prices recorded in September 2008.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not content to leave dumb enough alone, Palin calls Reddy’s facts and raises some more lies. She took to her Facebook page<\/a> 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:<\/p>\n

Palin:<\/strong> 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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notice that ellipsis Palin inserted after “supermarkets and restaurants<\/em>?” Here is the complete segment<\/a> with the portion she edited out in bold:<\/p>\n

WSJ:<\/strong> 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So Palin just happened to cut out the part that affirmed that price inflation has been “tame.”<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

Palin:<\/strong> 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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”<\/em> has not only failed, but has blown back into her face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,16],"tags":[381,34],"class_list":["post-3170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-wankery","tag-sarah-palin","tag-wall-street-journal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-P8","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5832,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=5832","url_meta":{"origin":3170,"position":0},"title":"Sarah Palin’s Top 10 Reasons To Support Occupy Wall Street","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/21\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The Occupy Wall Street movement is a bona fide phenomenon that, in two short months, has grown to levels no one could have predicted. And despite the inability of the media to discern the goals of the OWS protesters, their agenda could not be more apparent. The movement's core convictions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Economy"","block_context":{"text":"Economy","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=219"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1467,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1467","url_meta":{"origin":3170,"position":1},"title":"Now We Know What Sarah Palin Reads","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/19\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Last year, Sarah Palin famously flubbed a softball from Katie Couric. It's actually not even precise to call it a softball. It was more of a floating feather on a windless day. Couric simply asked Palin what she reads. That was the question that Palin was incapable of responding to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1066,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1066","url_meta":{"origin":3170,"position":2},"title":"Free Sarah Palin From Rupert Murdoch!","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/25\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"While John McCain is consumed with personally resolving the nation's financial crisis, Sarah Palin is cavorting with the glamor set (elitist?) and the uber-conservative media barons who are propping up the Republican ticket: \"Sarah Palin schmoozed with controversial media tycoon Rupert Murdoch at a swanky charity gala here Wednesday night.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art\/Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Art\/Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=9"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1522,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1522","url_meta":{"origin":3170,"position":3},"title":"Sarah Palin And The Birth Of The Tea Party Media","author":"Mark NC","date":"1\/14\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It's official. America's most ludicrous, harebrained, unbalanced, politically naive collection of cantankerous, hateful, rightist zealots (Tea Baggers), has spawned its own media association to bring to journalism the same type of biased, counter-factual, willfully ignorant, propaganda pioneered by the AstroTurf lobbyists, evangelists, and politicos who brewed up the Tea Parties\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4715,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=4715","url_meta":{"origin":3170,"position":4},"title":"Sarah Palin Quits Bus Tour (?) And Slams Fox News","author":"Mark NC","date":"6\/22\/2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Who was it who said that Sarah Palin is an idiot? Oh yeah, everybody! Including her boss Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News. And I don't think that Palin's latest tweet is going to change Ailes' mind. Responding to media reports that she had bailed out of her bus\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1463,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1463","url_meta":{"origin":3170,"position":5},"title":"Comparing Sarah Palin To Howard Dean","author":"Mark NC","date":"11\/17\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Time Magazine editor-at-large and senior political analyst, Mark Halperin sought to make a comparison between Sarah Palin and Howard Dean. Commendably, the show's co-hosts would have none of it. Mika Brzezinski said flatly that it was \"not the same.\" Joe Scarborough went even further: Joe\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3170"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3174,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170\/revisions\/3174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}