Remember Dr. Evil demanding “one … million … dollars” and getting blank stares? Satire can’t keep up with reality. Two highly paid analysts with MSNBC and The New York Times think Michael Bloomberg could have made America rich again with his spare change because if you divide his $500 million in futile campaign spending by 327 million Americans, you get $1 million each.
I know math is hard. But that infamous clip of Brian Williams of MSNBC and Mara Gay of the Times editorial board shows we’re in a lot of trouble. Billions of it. Decades ago, C.D. Howe got roasted because John Diefenbaker pretended he’d asked insouciantly, “What’s a million?” in a budgetary debate. Well, how much worse would it have been if it was a serious question?
For the record, it’s a one with six zeroes after it. Also, perhaps more significantly, a thousand times a thousand. Whereas Williams apparently thought it was a thousand divided by a thousand or something.
Working through it in front of a national audience he said, “Don’t tell us if you’re ahead of us on the math.” We are. We know if you’re dividing X million by Y million, you just cancel out the millions and divide X by Y. And that 500 divided by 327 is almost exactly one and a half, right?
Not Williams. He even got $1 million, not $1.5 million. Or rather believed it; he said, “When I read it tonight on social media it kind of all became clear.” What did? That your school system is failing? That not everything on the internet is true? That you should read more science books? No. That the rich are evil plutocrats.
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