Celebs And Politicians Can't Stop Stealing Athletic Valor

[LiberalArkie]

Rep. Madison Cawthorn isn’t the first and won’t be the last. When the stakes are low and the going gets tough, the weak get deceptive — especially when they think no one will bother investigating

Congressman Madison Cawthorn arrived straight out of central casting, with a chiseled jawline redolent of a young Tom Brady. At 25, the Republican freshman from North Carolina’s 11th congressional district is the youngest elected official in D.C., and aside from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, the most high-profile wheelchair user now holding public office in the U.S. He also presented himself as an against-all-odds athletic success story, claiming he had rehabilitated so effectively from the 2014 automobile accident that left him partially paralyzed that he was on the cusp of qualifying for the Paralympics and setting records in a pair of wheelchair sprint events.

A great story, except for the fact that a recent article in The Nation attempted to substantiate Cawthorn’s Paralympic claims, and found no evidence whatsoever of his involvement in a competition in which he was supposedly preparing to break world records. On the basis of the available evidence, writer Sara Luterman concluded that Cawthorn had lied about his wheelchair training regimen and record-setting potential because the Paralympics, impressive though its competitors might be, is a fairly low-profile event, and therefore something that an individual habituated to lying like Cawthorn — who had already fudged his dismal academic and business records — would recognize as a safe bet in terms of public exposure and its possible consequences.

Such athletic deception, though, puts Cawthorn in heady company, alongside a rogue’s gallery of other politicians and celebrities who have been desperate to enhance otherwise-insubstantial backgrounds with a soupçon of sporting glory.

“The older I get, the more everybody I meet tells me how great at sports they were 10 or 20 years ago,” says my cousin Cody Klempay, a two-time Pennsylvania state heavyweight wrestling champion who competed at 285 pounds for the University of North Carolina, where he achieved comparatively less success before completing his career at local Waynesburg University. “There are not many people at that next level, and everyone who is [in NCAA Division I athletics] is already very good, a fact I learned pretty quickly. But to hear about it later, at the gym or wherever, tons of random couch potatoes were only a knee injury away from the Olympics. Talk is really cheap, and most people think you’re not going to look up PDF records or videos or whatever backing up what they’re saying, even though that’s easy to do now, because most folks are under the impression you’ll take them at their word.”

SNIP

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/madison-cawthorn-paralympics-lies

[Wounded Bear]

1. Following in their hero's footsteps...

Old whn* and his "best baseball player in New York state" who couldn't serve because of his debilitating bone spurs claims.

*=what's his name

[keithbvadu2]

2. Ordinary exaggerations become extraordinary.

Ordinary exaggerations

become extraordinary.

The older I get, the better I used to be.

There are enough splinters of the True Cross of Jesus to provide firewood for the winter.

I caught a fish so big that I could only reach one end of it (stretching out one arm).

[Iggo]

3. Good gawd! "Stealing Athletic Valor"???

Well if that’s not the stupidest thing I’ve heard all morning!

“Stealing Valor” already sounds dumb, when it’s easier and less hilarious to say “Lying about your military service.” For the most part, I try to let that one go without laughing.

But “Stealing Athletic Valor”???

Come on! 😂😂😂😂😂

[lame54]

4. The Al Bundy Syndrome

[mackdaddy]

5. LIAR seems more accurate than stealing valor. "Accused Sexual Predator" seems accurate too.

Half of the small college he attended signed a letter saying he was a sexual predator.

https://www.asheville.com/news/2020/10/attack-by-madison-cawthorns-schoolmates-goes-viral/