Mara Gay's Math Mistake.

People are minimizing, including Mara Gay herself who, of course, makes this into a racial thing in "My People Have Been Through Worse Than a Twitter Mob."

“Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over, I feel like a $1 million check would be life-changing for people. Yet he wasted it all on ads and STILL LOST," Williams said in quoting a tweet by journalist Mekita Rivas.

“It’s an incredible way of putting it,” Williams concluded.

“It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true,” Gay added. “It’s disturbing.”

The U.S. population is currently 327 million people, which if evenly divided by $500 million comes to $1.53 per person.

(I'd link to Brian Williams' ineffective defense, but he wisely has not written one.)

Williams apologized on the air after the segment out of a commercial break in self-deprecating fashion.

"While I have you both and our audience paying attention, turns out Mara and I got the same grades at math. I'm speaking of the tweet we both misinterpreted. He could give each American $1," he said. "Again, I didn't have it in high school. I don't have it tonight. I stand corrected. Sorry about that. The tweet is wrong."

The thing Ms. Gay is still missing -- and Maureen Dowd tries to minimize away -- is that you have an opinion writer who honestly believed that Michael Bloomberg could write a check for $1 million to every American, for the cost of his campaign ads. 

Really? You believed that?
And you are in a position to opine on national political issues when you hold those absurd beliefs? That he was so rich, he could pay those kind of costs because he was actually sinking that kind of money into a national campaign.

How unrealistic, and out of touch with real-world money and finances. How can you believe anything she writes in the future about income inequality if she is that out of touch with reality in America? I do believe part of the reason she is in that opinion-sharing job is because of her skin color -- to make up for the years of discrimination blacks faced in the workplace, including in newspapers.

It's not the math, it's swallowing the concept whole, without questioning what you are consuming and putting forth as truth to others.

By putting an upper-middle-class young woman in a worldly job that she is just not ready for with her lack of real-world bullshit detection (and which was revealed on national tv) does her and her "black opinion" no service. Why not just hire the best -- including the basic-math literate female -- and see who best represents America today?  Skin color representation is just not cutting it.

I don't think Mara Gay is all that smart in a realistic way, and by doubling down on that, and pulling her race into it, she confirmed that she doesn't understand it is not only math skills she is lacking. (Maybe a little less time on the shoes, hair, makeup and black history, and a little more time adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing? It's not that hard, really ladies...)

Math is neither sexist nor racist once you come to know it intimately. Get there already.