{"id":777,"date":"2011-03-24T05:50:39","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T09:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=777"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:43:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:43:24","slug":"the-alaskans-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2011\/03\/the-alaskans-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alaskan’s Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

We regretfully return to one of my least favorite topics: Sarah Palin, what she says and what she stands for.\u00a0 In this episode, we find Queen Sarah speaking to a business group in Long Island.\u00a0 At one point in her talk, Sarah’s mysterial muse inspires her to make a joke<\/a> about breast-feeding:<\/p>\n

“It’s no wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody you better breastfeed your baby–yeah, you better–because the price of milk is so high right now!”<\/p>\n

Sigh.\u00a0 Not only politically incorrect but factually wrong.\u00a0 The chart below shows how the price of a gallon of milk<\/a> has risen vs the general rate of inflation over the last ten years:<\/p>\n

\"Milk<\/p>\n

Since 2001, prices in general (CPI) have risen 26 percent, while milk has risen 18 percent.\u00a0 Sarah can’t let the truth get in the way when a snarky remark can be made at the expense of those she opposes.<\/p>\n

Why does she bother me so much, that I would take time to fact-check the price of milk?\u00a0 It is not just her political stance (though that’s a good start).\u00a0 She also triggers my distaste for celebrity, or more accurately, the legitimacy that our culture confers on celebrity.\u00a0 It is beyond me why a celebrity’s fashion should be copied, why a celebrity’s opinions should have more value than others, why a celebrity’s life should matter to complete strangers.\u00a0 One can argue that Sarah Palin is our first political celebrity, someone who is famous for being famous rather than for any real accomplishment.<\/p>\n

Sarah embraces her celebrity, as she should.\u00a0 It provides great cover for her incoherence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We regretfully return to one of my least favorite topics: Sarah Palin, what she says and what she stands for.\u00a0 In this episode, we find Queen Sarah speaking to a business group in Long Island.\u00a0 At one point in her … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=777"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2130,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777\/revisions\/2130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}