Nancy Pelosi did an interview with James Coroden of the Late Late Show, in which she showed how ridiculously out of touch she is.
We all have found our ways to keep our spirits up during these trying times. Mine just happens to fill up my freezer. #LateLateShow pic.twitter.com/dqA32d5lU1
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) April 14, 2020
First, I have to call bullshit on this. She may like ice cream, but I’m sure what keeps her spirits up is the wine cellar full of the Sonoma Valley’s finest spirits.
Nevertheless, Pelosi was criticized because she has two Sub-Zero refrigerators, valued at $12,000 each, and a freezer full of ice cream sold for $12 per pint.
Especially since she has been in Congress since 1987 and has been collecting a government salary since I was four years old.
Matt Gabriele is a Professor of Medieval Studies and Chair of the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech.
He thought it was a good idea to Tweet this in Nancy Pelosi’s defense.
https://twitter.com/prof_gabriele/status/1250821894376509443
Wow….
Yes, that’s technically correct but also completely disingenuous.
I have two refrigerators. I know a lot of people in the South and Midwest to do to. It’s the “beer fridge” or “deer fridge” where the season’s processed venison is stored.
That fridge is usually the old fridge that still works and plugged in, in the garage after the kitchen fridge was replaced. Or is was a really cheap fridge or chest freezer purchased for garage use. My garage fridge was a Lowes scratch-and-dent floor model sold for a couple hundred bucks.
That is very, very different than two designer refrigerators installed in custom cabinets in a million-dollar kitchen.
I guess it’s weird for people who eat Oscar Meyer cold cuts to complain that Pelosi likes important Seranno ham, or that people who drive a 10-year-old Honda to complain that Pelosi has a new S-Class Mercedes. Ham is ham and a car is a car.
I know that Conservatives are often portrayed as anti-intellectual, but if thinking that a tenured professor of a useless subject, who will not lose his job during the Coronacrisis, defending a career corrupt politicians form criticism because of her showing off $22,000 worth of refrigerators full of $120 worth of premium ice cream as though it’s a cute little thing is what is wrong with modern academia, then consider me an anti-intellectual.
Right up there on the clueless meter with Bernies “If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.”
I will concede those of us in my shared household do have two refrigerators, it’s more like 1 and a third: we have the fifteen plus year old main, two door and a freezer drawer fridge for all the food, and we have a fifteen to twenty year old tiny drinks fridge because my father likes his soda and beer cold. Neither is anywhere near the $22k mark (I think the main fridge was somewhere near $1200-1500, but that was a major long term investment for the home, replacing a ten year old fridge that we moved over to a rental home). My father and I have done our own maintenance and repairs over the years, because “f’ it that thing cost real money” and even then the main fridge has various broken pieces that can’t be fixed..
But Nancy and Patton Oswalt are seriously tone deaf about how regular Joe Shmoe and Sally WorkingClass live their lives.
We have the multiple fridge/freezer thing as well. That’s because we are cheap. After many major holidays, and sometimes just before, ham and turkey go on sale. You can buy good meat for very low cost. Even if the amount of meat you get from a whole turkey is only 50% of the hanging weight, that’s still only $1.80 a pound (most years). Same with ham, but the yield is much higher.
We buy and freeze for later.
Same with meat we our our friends harvest. It ends up in the freezer for later.
As for that fridge, it’s no longer full and it hasn’t had ice cream in it in weeks. Cause the cost was prohibitive with the change in income.