And the message: TONIGHT’S ATTENDANCE 1.5 MILLION.
Inasmuch as the seating capacity for hockey at the American Airlines Center arena is listed as 18,584, the attendance figure clearly was an exaggeration. Or, as the buzzphrase du jour might call it, an “alternative fact.”
“Alternative fact,” as most followers of the dishonest media probably know by now, was the term used last week by presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, to explain an apparent discrepancy in estimates of how many live bodies had assembled in Washington to witness the presidential inauguration.
President Trump’s press secretary claimed it was the biggest crowd ever for an inauguration, putting the figure at 1.5 million. But The New York Times (motto: All the Alternative Facts Fit to Print,) reported it had hired an expert who studied photos of the event and declared the crowd was only one-third the size of the gathering for Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.
Pressed about the difference in estimates, Ms. Conway explained that the press secretary had merely presented “alternative facts,” which apparently is a relative of the word “truthiness.”
Against that back story, and the bickering from both sides that immediately followed, the image of the message on the Dallas Jumbotron instantly went viral. Although there was no immediate tweet emanating from the White House, a lot of people who posted online comments thought it was pretty funny.
One reaction, which its authored described as an “actual Trump tweet,” spoofed: “Hockey is not an American sport, and when I renegotiate NAFTA, we will stop the import of these foreigners and their sport into the U.S., except for the Russian players. They’ll get to stay. Because Putin says nice things about me.”
Surprisingly, though, self-described Trump supporters laughed, too.
“Though I am a Trump supporter, that was pretty funny.”
“Even as a Trump supporter IF you dont find this funny you are WAY to polictically correct.”
Whether it’s a hockey team’s business to mix pucks with politics can be debated, of course. But after months of national divisiveness in which even family gatherings tended to descend into shouting matches or awkward silences, anything that can make both sides laugh at politics — and themselves —is a welcome alternative.
And that’s a fact.
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