Campaign 2008

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Sarah Palin, Hypocrite
Why she shouldn't complain about big government wasting taxpayer money.
Timothy Noah
posted Sept. 4, 2008
Dalton Conley Replies
The NYU sociologist elaborates on stress, work, and the rich.
Timothy Noah
posted Sept. 4, 2008
Sarah Palin Wows Convention!
Why success is foreordained for the vice-presidential nominee's convention speech.
Timothy Noah
posted Sept. 3, 2008
Stress and Class
An NYU sociologist claims, preposterously, that it's more stressful to be rich than poor.
Timothy Noah
posted Sept. 2, 2008
Sarah Palin, Web Invention
How a college sophomore put Alaska's governor on the map.
Timothy Noah
posted Aug. 29, 2008
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chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Whopper of the Week: Bud SeligPlus a bonus Thanksgiving Whopper

By Timothy Noah
Posted Friday, Nov. 23, 2001, at 12:41 PM ET

"St. Louis is closer to Minneapolis than Milwaukee is."

—Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, arguing that the Milwaukee Brewers, in whom Selig maintains a financial interest currently placed in a trust, would not benefit financially from Major League Baseball's contemplated elimination of the Minnesota Twins. Quoted by Don Walker in the Nov. 14 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

"Distance between Saint Louis, Missouri, United States and Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, as the crow flies: 464 miles."

—Worldwide "distance calculator" from Bali and Indonesia on the Net.

"Distance between Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States and Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, as the crow flies: 295 miles."

—Ibid.

Note: Derek Zumsteg's Nov. 19  "The Week in Quotes" column in BaseballProspectus.com, from which this item is derived, puts the distance between St. Louis and Minneapolis at "a little more than 600 miles" and the distance between Milwaukee and Minneapolis at "a little more than 300 miles." Chatterbox assumes Zumsteg calculated by road mileage.

Special Thanksgiving Weekend Bonus Whopper: Peter Bart

"Over several months he will volunteer that he has never once dated a Jewish girl, never attended a seder, and has been inside a synagogue only once, for the bar mitzvah of then-agent Michael Ovitz's son. ('I wanted to see what one was like.')"

—Amy Wallace's profile of Variety Editor in Chief Peter Bart in the September Los Angeles Magazine. Wallace's article was also the basis of this earlier Whopper.

"'My name is Dorothy Callman,'" she writes. 'I am Jewish. We dated for three years, were married close to twenty.'"

—Letter by Bart's ex-wife in the December Los Angeles Magazine, as quoted in the Nov. 16 Los Angeles Times. The two married in 1961 and divorced in 1980.

Got a whopper? Send it to . To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:
Nov. 16, 2001: Sara Jane Olson
Nov. 9, 2001: Donald Rumsfeld (item includes retraction)
Nov. 2, 2001: Dick Armey
Oct. 26, 2001: Gale Norton
Oct. 19, 2001: State Department Deputy Spokesman Philip Reeker
Oct. 12, 2001: Clarence Thomas
Oct. 5, 2001: Abdul Salam Zaeef
Sept. 27, 2001: Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Dick Cheney
Sept. 20, 2001: Larry C. Johnson
Sept. 13, 2001: Yasser Arafat
Sept. 7, 2001: Tommy Thompson
Aug. 30, 2001: HHS spokesman Bill Pierce
Aug. 23, 2001: Variety Editor Peter Bart
Aug. 17, 2001: Tom Daschle
Aug 10, 2001: Robert Mueller
Aug. 3, 2001: Barbara Olson
July 27, 2001: Jeffrey Archer
July 20, 2001: George W. Bush
July 13, 2001: George W. Bush
July 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
June 29, 2001: David Brock
June 22, 2001: Edmund Morris
June 15, 2001: George W. Bush
June 8, 2001: Nepali Prince Regent (subsequently, King) Gyanendra
June 1, 2001: Mary McGrory
May 25, 2001: Ari Fleischer
May 18, 2001: York, Pa., Mayor Charles Robertson
May 11, 2001: Ted Olson
May 4, 2001: Rear Adm. Craig Quigley
April 27, 2001: Ben Affleck
April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O'Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan. 26, 2001: Denise Rich