The press are exactly who they said George H. W. Bush was

Projection

You’d be hard-pressed these days to find a more out-of-touch class of people than corporate journalists.

CNN aired a report this week documenting the financial woes of a Texas family that says the rising cost of inflation has taken a severe toll on its pocketbook. Inflation, the family says, has been felt most keenly in the cost of groceries.

There are 11 members in the family, including two biological children, six adopted children, and one foster child.

The CNN segment quotes the mother as saying the following: "A gallon of milk was $1.99. Now, it's $2.79. When you buy 12 gallons a week times four weeks, that's a lot of money."

The report quickly became fodder for so many jokes in competing newsrooms. Journalists and pundits everywhere reacted with sneers and jeers, ignoring the problem of rising inflation and focusing entirely on the volume of milk apparently consumed by the Texas family.

“[Twelve] gallons of milk a week may sound like a lot,” said New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, “but they've actually had to cut out their milk baths on alternate days."

Added Huffington Post editor Hillary Hanson, “Beyond the obvious hilarity of 12 gallons a week it's so crazy to me that ‘cost of a gallon of milk’ is still such a reference point because I barely know anyone who buys ANY gallons of milk??”

Even the official New York Times Wordplay Twitter account got in on the action, tweeting, "I can't do today's crossword. I'm too busy carrying my 12 gallons of milk home."

In 1992, the press falsely reported then-President George H.W. Bush was befuddled during a campaign stop by an ordinary grocery store bar-code scanner, the obvious implication being he had grown so out of touch he no longer understood even basic everyday technology. As it turns out, though, the piece of technology Bush marveled at was indeed an impressive new gadget, one that could both weigh produce and scan mangled bar codes.

In retrospect, it seems the press’s bogus reporting may have been an act of projection. Because if you want to see what out-of-touch looks like, look no further than the media's reaction this week to a Texas family’s financial concerns.

“Wait, when was a gallon of milk last going for $1.99?” tweeted Princeton historian and frequent MSNBC contributor Kevin Kruse. His note on social media included a graph charting the average price of milk, adjusted for inflation, between 1995 and 2020.

Inflation-adjusted charts aside, it’s astonishing that an Ivy League professor doesn't understand that the average price of a given item isn't the same as its retail price in certain locations. The current national average for a gallon of regular gas is $3.41, according to AAA. However, in Humboldt County, California, specifically, the cost of a gallon of gas is $4.96, whereas the cost in, say, Union County, South Carolina, is $3.11. Likewise, though the average cost of a gallon of milk has not been $1.99 for quite some time, the retail cost was as low as $2.03 at select Walmarts as recently as October 2020. You can also buy a gallon for less than $1.99 at this very moment at select Lidls. As it turns out, the cost of certain goods and services isn’t uniform across the country.

Kruse, by the way, was a key adviser on a New York Times historical fiction initiative, the 1619 Project, which may explain why the project contains so many obvious and easily debunked falsehoods.

“I’m a swing voter who attended 14 Trump rallies and voted for Glenn Youngkin,” scoffed Vox’s Ian Millhiser. “Here’s why I buy a dozen gallons of milk every week to ward off critical race theory.”

Reuters senior correspondent Chris Taylor asked elsewhere, “Are these folks bathing in milk?”

You’re all going to make me do the math, aren’t you? I hate everyone who made this necessary.

There are 128 ounces in a gallon. At 12 gallons per week, that’s 1,536 ounces. For a family of 11, which includes teenage boys (have any of you ever seen a teenage boy drink milk?), each person gets roughly 140 ounces of milk per week, which translates to about 20 ounces per day. Twenty ounces of milk is roughly two-and-a-half glasses per day, per person. That’s a glass at breakfast and a glass at dinner. This doesn’t even take into account milk that may be used for cooking purposes.

Read more at the Washington Examiner.