10 Comments
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Tom Hoffarth's avatar

Brilliant read Michael.

Fist bump, American flag, burning flame.

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Mike Harkreader's avatar

Somehow over the years spitball pitchers and their various methods to doctor the ball was moved from lying to "gamesmanship", sort of similar to alternative facts.

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James Dolan's avatar

These figures are not exact but I believe they are in the ballpark (fitting for a newsletter like this one): the fact checkers at The Washington Post, during Trump’s first term, tallied how many lies, falsehoods or even gross exaggerations he told during his first term. And since they also did fact checking for other Presidents and to be fair, they compared his total to that of his predecessor President Obama (because all politicians lie, amirite?). During Trump’s first term alone, I believe his total was in excess of 20,000. And again, since all politicians lie, it’s really illuminating to see how close that was to Obama’s total. According to the fact checkers, Obama’s total (for two terms) was eight (8). These may be slightly off. Trump may well have had over 30,000 demonstrable falsehoods and it’s possible Obama may have had twelve. We have never seen lying turned into such a tour de force and I hope, after this is all over, that we have collectively raised our standards and never accept it again.

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Arnold Tilden's avatar

Make lying wrong again.

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Michael Kutch's avatar

One can cheat and lie. And get away with it. Seemingly. You're only fooling yourself. Proverbs 19:9

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John's avatar

Please keep your column to sports topics and keep government/politics out of it. There's already enough news feeds with that garbage.

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Michael Weinreb's avatar

Respectfully, John, I will write what I want in my own newsletter.

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John's avatar

Understood. That's fair. But if I may make a suggestion. I love the old leather football helmet you use as your identification/logo. I'm a collector of old footballs and old helmets. When we see them, that should be an indication of what's to follow. With the heavy dose of government and politics content you choose to include in your newsletter, you might want to revise the identification/logo to better represent what's about to follow. It's a little misleading as is.

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Michael Weinreb's avatar

Leather helmets existed until the mid-to-late 1940s. At that point, the NFL was still almost entirely an all-white league. Sports and politics have never existed in separate vacuums, and they never will.

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James Dolan's avatar

Hmmm. My version of Mr. Weinreb’s column leads with this:

“This is Throwbacks, a newsletter by me, Michael Weinreb, about sports, history, culture and politics, and everything in-between.”

It seems to me, then, that this column fits pretty squarely with what he tells the reader it’s going to be.

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