Michelle Obama attended the UC Mercer commencement ceremony this year – and this very strange story details how the visit ended up costing the school more than a million dollars, ten times the original cost estimate for the commencement ceremony. What’s odd isn’t the story itself – the President or the First Lady go to these kinds of things all the time, and I’m sure the bill is reasonable – but that the story is so disjointed and logically incoherent. For example,

Private contributions and interest on a private endowment fund have helped cover the cost. UC spokeswoman Patti Waid Istas said that nonstate dollars and other contributions will be used to cover the remaining balance of around $362,338.

So private contributions covered the bulk of the cost – but not to worry, nonstate dollars and more contributions will meet the balance. This makes no sense at all. Why the odd “nonstate dollars” formulation? One suspects that some of the money is coming from a pool of money that did come from the taxpayers but is technically “nonstate” for some reason.

Another weird thing is the justification given for the expense – they had budgeted $100,000, but the event ended up topping $1,000,000. The reason? Because 12,000 people showed up for commencement – the implication being, Ms. Obama’s celebrity attracted a larger crowd. No doubt it did, to some extent – but people tend to go to commencement or not regardless of the speaker. Some additional interest I can see, but I really doubt that they had originally planned for 1,200 attendees and were surprised by a tenfold jump.

Finally, there’s this weird description of the extra costs:

The address attracted about 12,000 visitors, requiring additional transportation, audiovisual and multimedia needs and other items. Obama was neither paid for her appearance nor compensated for travel and security.

Additional audiovisual and multimedia needs – presumably to highlight their star guest – I can see, but a million bucks worth? And if OBama paid her own transportation (well, if we taxpayers paid for it in general) then where’s the “additional transportation” coming from?

I suspect that the expenses were actually used to put on a lavish reception for Ms. O, and that she and her retinue were feted. Nothing wrong with that, but they shouldn’t pretend that suddenly it costs a million dollars to host the First Lady, when she pays her own way and brings her own security team.