When Chemists Attack

Hillary Clinton is in a bit of trouble these days. While she said she had to run from an airplane to avoid sniper fire in Bosnia, video showed her calmly stepping off the plane and being greeted by officials and a young girl. The young girl then read Ms. Clinton some poetry.

Oops!

Here’s what Clinton said when being confronted about her fabrication.

“I say a lot of things — millions of words a day — so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement,”

Over at Steve Benen’s blog, a commenter makes an observation about Clinton’s statement.

UM, can someone really find the time to say “millions of words a day?”
Am I the only one that finds it sad, funny and ironic that she manages to exaggerate in a statement meant to forgive her for exaggerating?

Sad, funny, and ironic. Check. I’ll focus on the “funny”.

So I got to thinking – how long would it take to say a million words? To give Clinton the benefit of the doubt, I’ll choose a small word that can be said quickly. Let’s say … “fart”. I can manage to say the word “fart” about three times per second if I don’t have to take a breath. If I didn’t have to take any breaths, then …

… I’d get out the millionth word after well over three days. If I didn’t have to stop for a breath. And if I did nothing but say the word “fart” over and over for all 24 hours of each day. (A politician’s life is hard …)

How fast would Clinton have to talk to get out a million “fart”s in a day?***

11.6 words per second. If Clinton’s run for the presidency doesn’t work out, she can always replace this guy in the next series of Micro Machines commercials!

***This calculation hinges on what the definition of “is” a day is. Clinton may have been planning to speak from Venus, where the day (depending on which kind of day you mean) is either 243 or 117 Earth days long.