Sarah Huckabee Sanders rose to national prominence in part during her time at the lectern as White House press secretary, but the purchase of a $19,000 lectern for the Arkansas governor is undergoing scrutiny and prompting claims that records about it have been altered.
A legislative panel next week will take up a lawmaker’s request for an audit to review the purchase of the lectern, which was bought in June for $19,029.25 with a state credit card. The Arkansas Republican Party reimbursed the state last month for the wood-paneled and blue lectern, which the state received in August.
“From my experience, where we’re at with this particular thing is we need to allow legislative audit go in,” Republican Sen. Jimmy Hickey, who requested the audit, said. “Everyone knows them, they do their work, they’re very thorough and then they produce a detailed report that comes to the Legislature through an open committee.”
The made in china version is $1000. Make it custom in the US with real hardwood and we are more like $5000. We can see that has a mic installed, which is $500 for a good mic (A $10 mic would work okay, but the $500 does sound better and isn’t unreasonable), which we will pair with electronics to turn the audio into digital for another $500. While we are at it we will build in a computer with a presenters display all connected to the building video system - another $5000.
I’m trying to be generous by using the highest reasonable costs and the most complex feature set. I still can only come up with $11k.
Oddly enough, the ‘official’ presidential mic is a pair of Shure SM57s which cost $100 brand new.
There is nothing wrong with a SM57 in this application, but you can get a better mic for more $$$. Generally people going for a better mic first head to a studio and have an engineer try them on each one until they find one that sounds good with their voice. But in the end the difference from the sound of a SM57 is tiny so few bother, even the best professionals often choose a SM57 for their best recordings after comparing to more expensive microphones.
Except that it looks pretty much exactly like the picture on Amazon and ain’t no custom job with real hardwood.
Sure, but give any good local craftsman a picture and they can build one that looked so much like the picture that you wouldn’t be able to tell from pictures it wasn’t. The craftsman version would be much higher quality, but you would need an in person inspection to tell that. Of course the craftsman version could make something look nicer for the same price, or for more many can make something a lot nicer, but style often demand ugly.
$10 would work ok but $500 not unreasonable
It’s just 50x the price to go from ‘okay’ to ‘good’, fuck it why not 200x to get the ‘great’ model? It’s only taxpayers money!
Shit, if I ran this country, everyone would be using $10 ikea end tables stacked 2x tall for their ‘I’m important and need a fancy stand’. The microphone is your voice being louder. Want a chair, that’s not in the budget sorry. You so much as take an Uber to a press conference and that’s also coming out of your own pocketbook. Ain’t showed up on Thursday? You ain’t getting paid for Thursday. Govt shutdown? Oh I’m sorry, you thought you were getting paid for not doing your job?
But no, no, gotta pamper the idiots who think they matter. Damn country is fucked 8 ways from Sunday.
A $100 mic (the SM57 the president uses) is enough better than a $10 mic that speakers and audiences should care. The $500 mic is slightly better but most people can’t tell outside of AB tests in a controlled environment. As you go over $100 in price microphones get more special purpose and often are worse than cheaper ones outside of their special purpose - each human voice is different, so $500 is about the most you can spend on a general purpose microphone and be objectively better than something cheaper. While you can spend $2000 or even $4000 on a microphone, they tend to be very fragile - as in breath on them wrong and you break them - so they are only used in studios where you can ensure nobody breaths wrong around them.
Remember, I’m trying to come up with the reasonable most you could pay for this. You really should be spending less. There is no reasonable justification for the 200x microphone. There is a reasonable justification for the 50x cost - if only just barely justifiable.
I could see a handmade, hardwood lectern by a local artisan reaching that price point, and I think that’s totally reasonable for something that could be used for more than a century. Bonus, you’re giving back to the residents of your state by buying local.
But nah, this thing looks like cheaper garbage than some of the furniture I owned in college. $900 is a stretch.
