u/shiftless_wonder

Second, she tried to laugh off stances that progressives in her wing of the Democratic Party had taken in the preceding years: “‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” she said, echoing a comment that one of her allies had made about the heyday of ideas such as “defund the police.” Ocasio-Cortez represents an extremely liberal congressional district in New York City. The fact that she is declining to defend—and indeed wishing to move past—these positions shows how radioactive they have become. If only things were so easy.

Arday writes in the book, “it weirdly makes people question your credibility.” Is it weird? I don’t think it’s weird. When you keep succeeding against insurmountable odds, the facts of your surmounting will be bound to get a second look.

Arday’s record of public statements includes plenty that would seem to be exaggerated, if not completely false. He said repeatedly, for instance, that he’d once run 300 miles in three days for a charity event, and that on another occasion he’d run 600 miles in six days. As many people have now pointed out, doing either would be a near-world-record-level feat of endurance athletics. (Neither run is mentioned in his book; he recently told The Guardian that his 600-mile run had actually taken 12 days, including rest periods.) He boasted of having raised millions of pounds for charity—though under questioning from The Times, he conceded that he’d done this as part of a fundraising “syndicate.” In an interview, he claimed that he’d originally been part of the BBC series Up, which began filming before he was born—though this was later said to have been an analogy, not a literal description.