To spread awareness of the putative wage gap between men and women, members of the Democratic National Committee had a plan. On the occasion of the fatuous “Equal Pay Day” (April 12), they would open a lemonade stand at a Metro stop in Washington and charge two prices: 79 cents for women, a dollar for men. How clever!
The problem was, well, there were a lot of problems. The weather, for one, was cold and rainy. But as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reports, that was just the beginning:
Commuter responses included “You registering people to vote?” “I’ll do it on my way back,” and “I don’t take drinks from strangers.” (Indeed, accepting a cup of lemonade from kids at a neighborhood sidewalk stand just isn’t the same as getting a cup of yellowish liquid from adults at the Capitol South Metro station.)
The female Democrats amassed $53.60 in donations before retreating to a nearby coffee shop, their lemonade jug still partly full, and, as Milbank put it, “perhaps inadvertently confirming the oft-leveled charge by Republicans that Democrats wouldn’t even know how to operate a lemonade stand.”
