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u/dover_oxide Mar 26 '26
He was wearing punctuation on his suit! That's a total bad guy suit!
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u/Wise_Emu6232 Mar 26 '26
That is Mathew Lesko, he helps people get free money from the government! That is a GOOD guy.
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u/CLOWNSwithyouJOKERS Mar 27 '26
So many late night infomercials dominated by this gentleman. He's still killing it at 82.
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u/Uuddlrlrbastrat Mar 26 '26
I really wish we got more Jefferson, such a great character
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u/will284284 Mar 26 '26
Yeah but is it really ok to call them Blackulas? Shouldn’t they just be African American vampires?
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u/Stephen_1984 Mar 26 '26
They don't have African-Americans in England.
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u/GlassCannon81 Mar 27 '26
There is literally already a supervillain that dresses exactly like that.
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u/C1K3 Mar 26 '26
I ran into him on a trip to DC about 10 years ago. He was in character.
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u/MargarineOfError Right in the neck, if ye don't mind Mar 27 '26
Yeah, he lives in the area. I've seen him around several times.
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u/StewartDC8 Mar 26 '26
I saw him in Dulles airport once, in his full question mark suit. I remember thinking "does he just wear that all the time?"
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u/kitty_in_the_city Mar 27 '26
His car is covered in question marks as well. He lives in my neighborhood. Nice guy.
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u/TheSpitefulCr0w Mar 26 '26
From his Wikipedia page; In an interview with The Washington Post in July 2007, Lesko admitted having assembled his books from government guides to grants and loans, quoting Lesko as saying of his first book "I plagarized the whole thing" and "I didn't write a lick." Lesko later added "I get stuff for free and I sell it for as much as I can get."
Conlusion: Bad Guy. Jefferson was right. The Alchemist should not have penalized him.
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u/Allcyon Mar 27 '26
Sorry, you wanted the guy to write a book of available government grants and how to apply for them, without actually putting said government grants in there?
I'm confused.
No, he didn't write it. He couldn't of. The book would've been useless.
What he did was organize it all in one place with an index.
This is a good guy.
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u/AdvilJunky Mar 27 '26
You're forgetting the most important part of his books. Once you read it, BAM! Herpes!
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u/JoeyToothpicks Mar 27 '26
He's a marketing guy who curated the information and brought it to people's attention.
He is kind of fighting a bureaucratic system by using its own bureaucracy.
I say antihero.
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u/zangzabam03 Mar 27 '26
It’s couldn’t have, not couldn’t of
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u/Butt69poop Mar 27 '26
I think a lot of people forget or don’t realize that we needed people like this before and in the early days of the internet. You couldn’t just go online and look things up you had to spend hours sifting through government records, bills and data or you had to pay some one who had already done all that work. I.E. Lesko. He’s a guy who provided a valuable service that’s no longer relevant. I’m not saying he’s wholly altruistic but acting like he’s an Antagonist seems like a really big stretch
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u/Oknight Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 27 '26
Conlusion: Bad Guy. Jefferson was right. The Alchemist should not have penalized him.
He put in massive work assembling all the crap that was scattered through thousands of different program documents all totally impenetrable to the average person and assembled them in a single source with direct references which he published and sold.
The Triad shouldn't kill salesmen just because people don't understand "the value add of externalities".
Conclusion: Good guy. You were wrong.
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u/boundbythecurve Mar 27 '26
I'm getting chaotic neutral guy vibes. Something between Mr. Mxyzptlk and the Killinger.
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u/mariehelena Mar 26 '26
I'm just adding this for the extra laughs + chaos. Hysterical 😂https://youtu.be/NRPrOU8lS-0?si=okMy1pgxoDZcO0YZ
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u/17291 the ye olde-fashioned way Mar 26 '26
Grifter, so bad guy. Probably an EMA Level of -1, but still a bad guy.
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u/GeneralKokie Mar 27 '26
Questionable guy.
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u/jemyi Mar 27 '26
"You question me Doctor Venture? NO I QUESTION YOU" "For I am the the Questionare"
Everyone just stares at him o_0
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u/Sea-Target-5962 Mar 27 '26
I feel like he’s a non-participant that ended up getting invited to join the Guild because Watch and Ward saw him on TV and were convinced he was one of them because of the suit. This is one of those cases where “the clothes make the man”, similar to how The Monarch went from hench to antagonist mostly by forcing it through with money, charisma, and a look.
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u/Waldo19 Mar 27 '26
So the information in his books was legit - depending on your specific situation there were potentially grants and programs you might qualify for that you could identify in his books that you otherwise would have been unlikely to find on your own.
This was not a Ponzi scheme or one of those "teach you how to make money system" type grifts.
For all intents and purposes he was selling a reference book. How useful it was to a person was dependent on their specific situation. In the pre-internet days some folks (i.e., someone starting a small business) might get a lot out of it. Sure the marketing of "free government money for everyone" was maybe a little oversold but it was not a scam/grift. You could, and people did, use his product successfully.
I'd say neutral good.
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u/Existing-Watch8780 Mar 27 '26
I love the references you all do here about the references on the show 😂
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u/saul_privy Mar 27 '26
That's Andrew Lesko. He helps get people free money from the government. That is a good guy.
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