If you have good luck, accept it graciously. If you have incredibly good luck at a very young age, perhaps it’s best to run in the opposite direction?

As I’ve written in the past, sports announcer Al Michaels, blessed from early on with never having to worry about food and shelter or even more luxurious things–if anyone believes in miracles, it should be him.–has a serious breach where a sense of morality should be, whether we’re talking racist team names or athletes enduring brain injuries. In addition to feigning ignorance about such issues, he’s not above working in a political lie that serves his conservative mindset.

At this point, it’s difficult to know if Michaels is consciously lying or if he’s just fully digested bullshit talking points. From Timothy Burke at Deadspin:

Al Michaels is one of sports broadcasting’s best-known conservatives, and the NBC announcer cracked wise with one of the right’s most classic myths: that income taxes these days are extraordinarily high.

“That’d be $8 today,” Michaels muttered about Bill Belichick’s first job, making $25 a week for the Colts—“$22 after taxes he told us,” partner Cris Collinsworth replied. The truth:
 
Say you take Bill Belichick at his word (this may be difficult for you). If he really did only make $1,300 in income in 1975 (if, indeed, he made $25 a week for an entire year) then he wouldn’t have owed any taxes at all; the standard deduction was $1,600 in 1975. For someone to owe $3 a week in income tax in 1975, they’d have to have earned $3,400 a year.

In 2014, that’s about $15,037. A single person earning that and filing in 2014 would pay about $488 in taxes for the year—or $9.38 a week. That’s $2.13 in 1975 dollars—for a person earning nearly three times what Bill Belichick claimed to earn.•