Blumenthal's Harvard swim team claim: True!

So that's one thing he didn't sort of almost mislead people to believe

Published May 20, 2010 9:01PM (EDT)

A bit of a good news/bad news situation for the Richard Blumenthal campaign today. The bad: The Stamford Advocate found another example of him talking as if he'd been in Vietnam during the war. The good: He actually was on the Harvard swim team!

This was easily the weirdest part of the original Times story on Blumenthal:

In two largely favorable profiles, the Slate article and a magazine article in The Hartford Courant in 2004 with which he cooperated, Mr. Blumenthal is described prominently as having served as captain of the swim team at Harvard. Records at the college show that he was never on the team.

But! The Courant's Daniela Altimari says Blumenthal actually was on the team. He's in the yearbook and everything. It's true that he was not the captain, but no one has turned up any proof that Blumenthal himself ever said he was the captain. It looks like that was just falsely reported a couple of times, for whatever reason, and never checked.

Also in the "good news" category for Richard Blumenthal: He did not accidentally reveal, on TV, that his deeply held principles would've led him to (reluctantly!) support Jim Crow. Unlike some other candidates.


By Alex Pareene

Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene

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