Last week CNN profiled a middle-class family named the Stotlers and how inflation in Biden’s America has impacted their bottom line when it comes to their weekly grocery prices.
They are a family of 11 with nine children who revealed that they consume 12 gallons of milk a week.
It should have been a piece which focused the American media and twitterati on how quickly and furiously inflation is making an impact on average Americans’ everyday living expenses.
I found nothing particularly controversial when I watched it. I only have one 13-month-old child and the amount of whole milk we go through in a week for her would shock you.
If you watch the piece, it is a pretty straightforward account that follows the Stotler family grocery shopping and how they use coupons to buy low-grade, cheap food for their family.
The Stotlers, a Texas family of 11, was the subject of ridicule on social media after it was learned that they go through 12 gallons of milk per week
Media elites that wouldn’t be caught dead shopping at Cracker Barrel stores (like the one above in East Windsor, Connecticut), writes Meghan McCain
But that wasn’t how the snobs of the Left saw it.
‘Milk’ started trending on Twitter as too-cool-for-school New York Times writers and media figures mocked the family for the amount of cow-juice they consume and asked why CNN instead hadn’t done a piece focusing on how much rent has spiked in the past year.
The elitist reactions of the media to the problems of average American families have always been something that infuriates me.
At this point, most people already know the gross dissimilarities between the people who report and comment on the average American life with something close to contempt and the people who are actually living it.
The liberal media bubble isn’t an invention of the paranoid right. It’s real and it’s visceral, and it’s completely eroding trust between the people who have to worry about what a gallon of milk costs and the people who spend all their time between the Beltway and the coasts.
And that is just the print journalists, don’t get me started on the on-air commentators and hosts who spend all their time between Manhattan and the Hamptons or ‘Sag’ – as the cool kids call Sag Harbor.
Sadly, none of this is new.
After Trump’s victory in 2016, there was a slew of chastened liberal journalists and media figures who hadn’t seem it coming who vowed to understand and report more accurately on Middle America. No prizes for guessing how that worked out.
Instead, they seem even more alienated from the vast majority of ordinary people and if you’re paying attention you can see small examples everywhere.
CNN last week did a segment on the Stotler family, who told of their struggles to buy milk during the inflation crisis. The family buys 12 gallons of milk per week. The image above shows Krista and Larry Stotler speaking to CNN
‘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,’ Krista Stotler said
“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.”@EvanMcS goes grocery shopping with the Stotlers and shows us how badly inflation is hitting the middle class. pic.twitter.com/39hPPRHLja
— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) November 4, 2021
Last week, Food Insider put out a tone-deaf video where they sent millennials from New York City to New Jersey to try Cracker Barrel – the extremely popular restaurant chain and store with a Southern theme – for the first time.
The young people in the video react exactly the way you expect.
With condescending and ironic remarks to the ‘gelatin’ items on the menu, they mocked the chain as if they had traveled 45 minutes from Manhattan to visit a strange and primitive land for some kind of anthropological experiment.
What an insult to the millions of Americans who love Cracker Barrel. Like me. For a lot of American families, Cracker Barrel, like many chain restaurants in the country, is a great and reasonably priced dinner night-out destination.
My personal favorite dish is ‘Grandpa’s Country Fried Breakfast,’ which consists of two eggs, grits and your choice of meat with gravy. It is served all day and it is delicious.
You can also buy home decor or rocking chairs inside if you are so inclined. It is a quintessential American chain restaurant that has saved my life many times during my years on the road doing book and speaking tours and political events.
So why am I so angry? Because a media that treats people who drive F-150 trucks, eat at Cracker Barrel, vote for Glenn Youngkin and own guns, like animals at the zoo is just not doing its job.
How can average Americans have more trust in the media when it never takes the time to really get to know or understand them and treats them with contempt?
And the media can’t expect people to stop lying to them and pollsters about how they really feel and who they are really voting for when they are mocked for the amount of milk they buy a week and what they eat at their favorite restaurants in America.
Americans will remain divided until the people whose sacred duty it is to report their lives report them ALL with equal respect and understanding.