Your commentary, “Brian Williams misremembering,” appeared in Tuesday’s issue of The Times Record, our local Brunswick, Maine, newspaper. You seemed to take great pleasure in suggesting many people exaggerate certain moments of their lives in order to enhance their role in certain events. A form of “self-aggrandizement ” you called it.

However, further on, you mentioned Williams job “as lead personality of a network’ news division kind of, sort of, in some ways, depends on just an eensy, teensy tiny bit of credibility.” Obviously, if that’s all the credibility you think it takes for one with this level of authority who is allowed to speak or write freely and tear down the reputation and integrity of others, you confirm my assessment that “the current Press is a mess.”

You then proceeded to mention Ronald Regan and Sarah Palin and assert that they are guilty of problems similar to Williams. You then cite Tiger Woods, Bill Cosby, Tom Brady (interviewing Lance Armstrong) and Kim Kardashian in a cynical fashion indicating they would probably be guilty of the same “misremembering,” or in the case of Brady, cheating like Armstrong.

The “deflategate” issue is a non-issue, seized upon and inflated by the press in order to create the sense that Tom Brady and the Patriots were cheating. We will eventually find out whether anything inappropriate took place between the time the game officials had the game balls in their possession and the beginning of the second half of the game but Tom Brady played the second half of that game with the official game balls. Need I remind you that the Patriots blew Indianapolis out of the stadium in the second half.

And look at the result of the Super Bowl. Brady’s passing stats were record setting using the official game balls. Hardly an indication that there was anything to the charges that if the balls were underinflated it was an advantage to the Patriots.

I believe you owe Tom Brady an apology for suggesting he had cheated.

William S. Gardiner
Topsham