The Shi... Well You Know What Happened with Lance Armstrong

On the shores of “Lake Austin” (which is really just a dammed up river)…

 

Lance Armstrong sits up in bed and stretches his arms in the air then walks through the fancy $5M mansion on his way to the kitchen.

 

Inhaling the aroma of Juan Pelota java, he gazes upon the spectacular view of the river and hills from the kitchen window.

 

“Not bad for ten bucks,” he says with an evil smirk.

 

The phone in his pocket rings.

 

“McConaughey! Dude, what’s up?”

 

“Hey man, nice phallic symbol. I can see almost see it from my house with my new high-powered binoculars.”

 

“That’s not a phallic symbol. It’s a wind turbine. Hold on one second.”

 

Lance throws the phone on the counter and rushes through the sliding glass doors. He runs across the expansive grass lawn in his flip flops and pajama pants, waving his arms at the dozen men erecting a massive metal pole next to the boathouse.

 

“Guys wait! Stop! That’s not tall enough!” he yells at the construction crew.

 

“But, Mister Armstrong,” the foreman says, speaking in a low voice and pulling his construction helmet over his eyebrows, “we’re already breaking the code. Wind turbines aren’t allowed in this part of the city.”

 

“Oh c’mon. You think I care about the code? I want unlimited electricity at no cost. Double it and paint it yellow or I’m suing you!”

 

Inside the kitchen, he returns to his conversation with Matthew McConaughey.

 

“Sorry ‘bout that buddy.”

 

“What’s with the wind turbine?”

 

“I’m rebranding myself. I’m bringing yellow to the green energy industry. The techno-hippies are going to love… get ready for it… BlowStrong.”

 

A few days later…

 

Lance is standing in the kitchen, admiring the world’s tallest yellow wind turbine.

 

The phone in his pocket rings.

 

“McConaughey! Dude, what’s up?”

 

“Don’t you have caller ID?” a woman says.

 

“Uhhh… tell me your name and I’ll tell you mine.”

 

“Shove it Lance. That stupid wind turbine is blocking my view. Tear it down.”

 

“Who is this?”

 

*click*

 

A few hours later…

 

A tractor towing a massive 16^th century catapult crashes through the driveway and onto the expansive grass lawn. Sandra Bullock, dressed in a lavender suit from the set of Miss Congeniality, hops down from the tractor. In her hand is a remote control with a shiny red button.

 

“This is your last chance Lance!” she shouts.

 

“Wha…what… what is that smell?” Lance says, waving his hand over his nose.

 

“First it was watering the pavement during a drought then it was the mud in Dripping Springs. Now it’s this!” she screams and points to the wind turbine. “Why can’t you just be a good neighbor? This is Texas for crying out loud. People are supposed to be nice! Why can’t you just be nice?”

 

“But it’s green energy. Everyone loves green energy.”

 

*SPLAT* A bird crashes into the blades of the wind turbine and falls into the river with a loud splash.

 

Sandra gasps. “Mister Armstrong you are insufferable!” she shouts as she runs up the steep driveway.

 

“I should get President Obama to fund this project. This is brilliant. Unlimited electricity at no cost. Government subsidies to pay for the turbines and it’s like free. I should make that my new slogan.”

 

*SQUAWK* A bird lands with a thud on the pile of rotting feathered carcasses near the shoreline.

 

“Unlimited electricity at no cost,” he says nodding in agreement with himself. “I like that. Good thinking Lance.”

 

Standing on the bright green lawn, the water-saturated grass tickles his toes. Holding a steaming cup of Juan Pelota java in his hand, Lance nods at the wind turbine. He turns to walk back to the house, mumbling about the stench. The phone in his pocket rings and he stops in the middle of the lawn.

 

“McConaughey! Dude, what’s up?”

 

“Doesn’t anyone else call you? This is the Lance Armstrong Legal Team. Don’t you remember paying us over a million bucks to defend you?”

 

*SPROING*

 

The loud snap of a metal rope breaking pierces the air. Lance turns around just in time to see the catapult fling a dump-truck-size load of deer droppings at the wind turbine.

 

“Hate it to be the bearer of bad news buddy, but…”

 

Lance looks up at the sky and says, “Oh shit.”

 

***

 

That’s right folks! The shit has officially hit the fan for Lance Armstrong. The government has joined the qui tam (a.k.a. “whistleblower”) lawsuit against him for fraud. Quick, everyone cheer!

 

Honestly, I’m not excited about this. Ok I sort of am and I am sort of not. I fight with this case on a technical and political level. My opinion waffles on a daily basis. Today, I am more waffley than usual. Yes, technically Mr. Armstrong’s contract required him to abide by the rules of the sport and his willful violation of those rules may have constituted fraud. But is this the type of fraud contemplated by the law? I don’t know. Is it the type of fraud the government should be suing a private citizen for? I’m not so sure.

 

Whenever the government gets involved, we should ask if it’s really necessary. Is it necessary for the government to sue Mr. Armstrong for fraud? Is the harm against the United States Postal Service, a quasi-government agency, the type of harm the federal government should defend against? Or is the government bowing to public pressure? Notice that Mr. Armstrong is the only USPS rider named in the complaint. Why not the other riders? Did they not also allegedly defraud the government too? Oh right, they didn’t own the team.

 

I’m disappointed the government opted out of vigorously prosecuting the financial executives who somehow managed to accumulate more derivatives liability than the global economy. Ah-hah! At long last, the secret has been revealed. Why does Anna Zimmerman despise the Obama administration? Because the Banksters are still sitting pretty in their entire-floor-offices with sweeping views of Manhattan! Even I, cold-hearted capitalist bastard, think they belong behind bars for what they did. Callous, wanton, criminally negligent and reckless disregard for arithmetic and reason. These are the people the federal government should be going after.

 

Take a seat people! We got Bernie Madoff, Alan Stanford, and now we’re coming for Lance Armstrong. Government’s got this under control. Bringing the Banksters to justice is so last election. Survey says people want to see Mr. Armstrong raked over the coals. Wait, President Obama hates coal. Or does he? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter anyways. Tie him up to a yellow wind turbine and crucify him. Oh! Who is ready for the return of #unconstitutionalvendettawitchhunt?

 

Let me demonstrate the relative significance of Lance Armstrong versus the Banksters:

 

Lance Armstrong: A flea in the fur of an Ewok.

 

Banksters: The Death Star.

 

I get it. Yes, Lance Armstrong allegedly defrauded the government. But why are we going after him and not the real crooks? Wait a minute, I’m having a small flashback to some Congressional hearings that involved a lot of talk of “everyone else was doing it,” “it was necessary to stay competitive,” and “we knew it was wrong, we just didn’t care… because everyone else was doing it and we needed to stay competitive.” Hmmm… now that I think about it that sounds eerily familiar. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you read the transcripts from the Congressional hearings about the financial catastrophe, and replaced “derivatives, swaps, mortgage-backed securities, and CDOs” with “blood doping, testosterone, human growth hormone, and EPO,” you would end up with a document that looks almost exactly like the USADA’s Reasoned Decision, but about a thousand times longer.

 

And there it is. Now I’m back to thinking the government should sue Mr. Armstrong. Though I would much prefer nailing the Banksters to the bars in their prison cells, I will be content to go after a man who has come to embody all things shady. When you go on Oprah to confess, it’s not because you want the smallest possible audience to hear your confession. Mr. Armstrong wanted to tell the world he had doped for every year of his entire career (except for the 2009-11 comeback… because a man with an admitted 14-year history of doping suddenly decided to race clean *cough valid statute of limitations*). When you tell the world in that vainglorious of a fashion you doped whilst employed by the federal government, it makes it really difficult for the federal government to not get involved with the whistleblower lawsuit against you.

 

To be fair, the $40M paid by the USPS times three (intentional fraud allows the plaintiff to seek treble damages), so $120M, isn’t a laughing matter. Even if the government loses its case, people will remember Mr. Armstrong’s actions were wrong enough to warrant a lawsuit in the first place, and hopefully that will deter an entire generation of kids from growing up to become banksters.

Look Butt Don’t Touch

One more time for the cheap seats in back, namely Michelle Beadle, David Briggs and the folks over at @NBCSNCycling and NBC Sports, who I’m going to call out for being little more than ignorant talking heads. Here's the link to the video: http://video.nbcsports.msnbc.com/nbc-sports/51408276#51408276

 

We distinguish between thinking, speaking, and acting. You can think whatever you want. You can say almost anything you want. But when it comes to acting, the law makes it clear: you need to be mindful of other people’s right to be left alone. Models sign up to be pretty, to be judged by their looks, and to be desired, possibly even in the most sinful of carnal ways. Models don’t sign up to be touched. In the United States, we reject touching in the workplace so completely that you aren’t even allowed to touch the woman who is shoving her naked vagina into your face (maintaining a torturous one inch of air space) at a strip club. Touching someone, especially in a sexual manner, without their permission is a significant infraction. This is why Americans are particularly incensed about the Peter Sagan butt-pinch seen round the world.

 

Am I outraged? No. I think he’s immature and unprofessional. I don’t think his actions are representative of the entire peloton (as evidenced from the fact podium girls are almost never inappropriately touched on stage). At this point, I also think he’s been punished one hundred times over relative to the severity of his offense. Whatever you may think of Mr. Sagan, he did apologize quickly, sincerely, and without making excuses. He’s no Lance Armstrong – I may have cupped her butt, but I never actually pinched it.  

 

Dear Michelle Beadle,

 

Congratulations, you have succeeded in removing all doubt. You don’t appear to know anything about the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Peter Sagan, Fabian Cancellara (the winner), and cycling in general and neither does your co-host, who doesn’t even appreciate that finishing second at the RVV against Fabian Cancellara, one of the most established classics riders in the peloton, is more than a “decent finish.” Perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the intelligence of a woman who undoubtedly knows more about what you’re talking about than you do.

 

You’re right. The butt-pinch doesn’t warrant one-tenth of the media coverage and outrage it’s received. You could make the argument that a scantily-clad woman at a night club should expect to be fondled by some of the patrons and I would agree with you, as would my mother and every other woman I know. Doesn’t make it right, but it happens all the time. People typically go to night clubs with the specific intent of mixing and mingling for romantic purposes. The awards ceremony for a family-friendly sport isn't a night club.

 

Though I agree the world is sometimes too sensitive and a simple butt-pinch shouldn’t get so much attention, your dismissive attitude towards Maja Leye and all podium girls – that they should expect to be groped while doing their job simply because they are pretty young women who are “walking into” a horde of presumably horny cavemen masquerading as professional cyclists and we, the viewing public, should condemn them for an apparent lack of intelligence, ambition, and self-respect – demonstrates an unsettling degree of intolerance.

 

Our mothers and grandmothers fought for us to have a choice, not to have society make it for us. Criticizing a woman for wanting to profit from her beauty today is no better than criticizing a woman for wanting to profit from her brain sixty years ago. It’s wrong to assume that because a woman is modeling that all she wants to be is a model. That’s like assuming a kid flipping burgers only wants to flip burgers for the rest of his/her life. Modeling can be a lucrative and powerful career choice (*cough*Tyra Banks). Time in front of the camera can open many doors in the entertainment industry. Maybe the podium girl gigs are the necessary stepping stones for Ms. Leye to climb the entertainment industry ladder. Maybe she’s gunning for your job and beyond. I know several women who did similar part-time modeling gigs to pay for school. Three of them are now lawyers, one is a pharmacist, and another is a doctor. Don’t assume a woman who is profiting from her beauty is a vapid idiot with no intelligence, ambition, or self-respect. And even if she is, why do you care? And why does it mean she should accept being fondled as part of her job?

 

“Shouldn’t you want more for your daughter?” I want my future children to be healthy, independent, and happy. However they achieve those goals is up to them.  

 

Over and out. The Sagan saga is finished. Pais Vasco is in full-effect and Paris-Roubaix is fast approaching. There are much more interesting things in cycling to talk about.

Stop Arguing Love

Stop arguing about love. Quit with the red and pink equal sign avatars to support “romantic equality.” Love means nothing to the law. The United States Supreme Court doesn’t give two hoots two people being in love. You want to be in love? Be in love. Ain’t nobody stopping you from falling in love. It doesn’t take a judicial rubberstamp to be in love. No one needs to be in love to get married. There’s no checkbox on the marriage license application: Are you in love with this person: Yes or No? There’s no test to prove your love in order to qualify for a marriage license. When was the last time you bought flowers? How many times do you say, “I love you,” every day? None of that. You don’t even have to know each other! All you have to do is be a citizen, be competent to enter into a contract, file the paperwork, pay the fee, and sign on the dotted line. Boom, done, married.

 

If you are in love, go ahead, throw a party, exchange rings, say your vows, and announce to the entire world you’re in love and want to share the rest of your life with this person. You can even say you’re married. Shout it from the rooftops. I’m married to my same-sex partner! Be married. Buy a house together. Make a life together. No one is stopping you. The police aren’t going to arrest you. Marriage in the romantic sense – the part where you commit to love and cherish each other ‘til death do you part (or until you change your mind) – doesn’t require government approval. The two of you can make that promise to each other without involving anyone else, but good luck turning those romantic promises into a legally-enforceable marriage without the government’s approval.

 

In the eyes of the law, marriage is a contract formed between two consenting adults (of opposite gender). The contract is an exchange of promises. The couple promises to take care of each other and any children resulting from the marriage (even if the marriage terminates, responsibility for minor children continues). Taking care of each other includes being a defacto guardian in the event one spouse becomes temporarily or permanently unable to make decisions on their own behalf; it also includes sharing financial assets and being mutually responsible for each spouse’s individual financial decisions, as well as being financially responsible for supporting the children. The couple also promises fidelity to each other. Love is presumed, but it’s not mandated. So stop arguing love because it has nothing to do with the legal fundamentals of a marriage contract.

 

The question is not why should same-sex marriage be legal? The question is why should same-sex marriage be illegal? Americans don’t answer to our government. Our government answers to us. The government is required to prove to us why a particular activity is so dangerous to the general welfare of the entire nation that we should limit its practice. When President Clinton passed the Defense of Marriage Act, the American people were asleep at the wheel. Everyone thought, “I’m not gay, so this really doesn’t apply to me” or, “God says being gay is immoral and it should be illegal.” Neither of these are proper justifications for a government restriction of same-sex marriage.

 

Though Christianity may be the majority religion in the United States of America, we are governed by the Constitution and not The Holy Bible. Everyone who is against homosexuality and/or same-sex marriage because that’s what they learned in church needs to reread the Doctrine of Separation of Church and State. It means the government is prohibited from enforcing religious teachings as law. Freedom of religion means the right to practice your religion peacefully and without undue government restriction. To all the people who think they don’t need to be concerned with same-sex marriage because they aren’t gay and don’t care, I got news for you. Complacency is the first step to catastrophe. When the government comes looking for the rights you hold dear, you’ll wish your neighbors gave a damn.

 

Look, I’m not trying to be a fear-monger, but the government is filled with stupid yet amazingly talented power-hungry jerks that are really good at creating their own necessity. We need to be ever-vigilant in protecting our rights and the rights of our neighbors, otherwise they will erode over time and our children and grandchildren will learn about freedom in the history books.

 

In the spirit of keeping the government at bay, I demand a showing of proof that same-sex marriage is a threat to the general welfare of the nation. I demand a showing of proof that same-sex marriage endangers the children of same-sex couples. I demand a showing of proof that same-sex marriage puts society’s most vulnerable members at a heighted risk of abuse and manipulation. I demand a showing of proof that same-sex marriage unduly jeopardizes the safety of either spouse. “Because God says so” is not a showing of proof the government recognizes.

 

Stop arguing religion. Your God does not govern the United States of America. Religion is irrelevant to lawmaking. If anything, by continuing to argue Christianity’s prohibition of homosexuality as the justification for the government’s prohibition of same-sex marriage, you’re turning the government into an enforcer of your religious teachings, i.e. the law will be automatically disqualified by the Supreme Court. Practice your religion. Uphold the teachings of your religion. Share the teachings of your religion. Protest homosexuality if your religion dictates that it’s immoral. Shout from the rooftop that you hate homosexuals. You have a qualified right to verbalize your opinion. No one is stopping you. No one is going to arrest you. Why? Because you live in the United States of America and we protect your right to peacefully practice and promote your religion even when we think you’re a bigoted asshole. This is a sacred value to us, one that we found to be so essential to the human existence that we left our homeland, took a long boat ride into the unknown, and established an entirely new country to promote religious tolerance after a particularly bloody war with our former fathers. Freedom of religion. Freedom of speech. Freedom of the press. Freedom to petition and assembly. Freedom of association. Freedom is the foundation of this great nation of ours.

If someone can show me proof that legalizing same-sex marriage would have adverse consequences for the general welfare of the nation that are so significant that the least harmful course of action would be to limit the basic civil liberties of an entire class of persons, and/or that legalizing same-sex marriage would cause harm to specific classes of individuals whom the government has a duty to protect, then I will reconsider my stance that same-sex marriage should be legal. Until then, same-sex marriage should be legal because there is no government-recognized reason for it not to be.

The Butt-Pinch Seen ‘Round the World

With Twitter in an uproar about the photo of Peter Sagan pinching the butt of the podium girl kissing Fabian Cancellara’s cheek on the podium at the Ronde van Vlaanderen, all I can say is that Operation: Steal Spartacus’s Thunder is a raging success. By the way, Fabian Cancellara won the race.

 

Oh, that’s right. I’m supposed to be so furious with Mr. Sagan that I forget all about Mr. Cancellara’s stellar win. Hold on, let me find my pitchfork. Shoot, I seem to have lost it after the last Lance Armstrong unconstitutional vendetta witch hunt rally. On second thought, I would rather eat some ice cream and replay footage of Marianne Vos sprinting to victory for the fifty-millionth time. After that, I’m going to be a demeaning sexist jerk and ogle photos of fabulous Fabian. Meow!

 

Including podium girls in the ceremony isn’t sexist or demeaning to women. First of all, ladies if you don’t want to be hired and admired because of your beauty, then don’t become a model. If you’re a model who doesn’t want to kiss a strange man’s cheek and deal with the advances of a bunch of horny professional cyclists, then don’t become a podium girl. Please, people, stop acting like podium girls are forced onto the stage in super skimpy dresses to perform sexual favors for the gawking public. Podium ceremonies are light-hearted pomp and circumstance. When was the last time you saw a podium girl costume that was sexually suggestive? The dresses are typically more comical than revealing and most of them would pass muster at any good Southern tea party, especially when there’s a ridiculous hat involved. They’re a far cry from anything most women wear to night clubs. When was the last time you saw a podium girl kiss that was sexually suggestive? The light “show kiss” is hardly sexual slavery. Calm down; y’all are overreacting. If you want to go after sexist and demeaning attitudes towards women, then I’d like to direct your attention to burkas.

 

Women’s cycling isn’t lagging men’s cycling because of podium girls. Women’s cycling is a new sport. It’s made significant advancements in the last ten years. It takes time to build an audience. Superstars like Marianne Vos, who won the women’s RVV today, are paving the way for the sport’s continued growth. These advancements will continue regardless of the involvement of podium girls in the men’s ceremonies. For crying out loud, Afghanistan now has a national women’s cycling team – AFGHANISTAN, a country notorious for its suppression of women’s liberties (including the use of burkas). If that isn’t progress, then I don’t know what is. Here's the link to the story on the Afghan women's team: http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/51355537#51355537

On a global scale, across cultures and genders, civil rights movements of the last century have all sought to produce the same result: freedom of choice. Stop hating on the women who want to be models and podium girls. It’s ok to want to be pretty. It’s ok to actively try to be pretty. Being pretty and profiting from prettiness isn’t sexist or demeaning. I’m so tired of the calls for the decimation of feminine sexuality in the name of protecting women’s liberties.

 

That being said, Mr. Sagan was out of line in pinching the podium girl’s butt. Her lack of a response shouldn’t be interpreted to mean she wasn’t offended. Of course she didn’t slap him across the face on stage because that would’ve been as unprofessional as the butt-pinch was in the first place. The general uproar defending the podium girl’s right to perform her job without being subjected to Mr. Sagan’s wandering hands clearly demonstrates the exact opposite of what everyone is shouting about. No one thinks podium girls are sex objects who’ve “made themselves available” to the peloton. The public recognizes and respects the impenetrable distinction between being a model presenting awards and being a beautiful creature at the petting zoo. Hands off, buddy. Podium girls are to be visually enjoyed, not physically touched.

 

Mr. Sagan has since apologized on Twitter. I think it’s safe to say that every podium girl will be free from wandering hands for many years to come.

 

And now some words of wisdom from a sage “older” woman…

 

Dear Mr. Sagan,

 

Women have a funny way of making it abundantly clear when they want you to touch them. Wait for the invitation. I doubt you’ll have to wait long.

 

/s/ Anna Z.

 

Lance Armstrong vs Oprah Winfrey Round Two

Whereas the first part of the interview focused on the specifics, the second part transitioned into the more emotional side of Lance Armstrong in the aftermath of USADA’s lifetime ban. This is when we’re supposed to develop a degree of sympathy for Mr. Armstrong. Oprah asks him about what was that day like, when his sponsors called to cancel. He claims to have lost $75M in a period of only a few days. But then he goes on to say that competing was never about the money. He loves to win. Then he chooses his words poorly, to say the least. He says,

 

“A lifetime ban is the death penalty.”

 

Not even close. Lance Armstrong is the most famous cancer survivor in the world. If cancer had a poster-boy, oh wait a minute, that’s right it does – it’s Lance Armstrong! He should know better than to dilute the significance of facing actual death by comparing it to a lifetime ban from competition. If someone else had compared a lifetime ban to the death penalty, Mr. Armstrong would’ve activated his 28 Million superpowers and berated that person relentlessly for offending the people in this world who really are facing and fighting death every day. Stage four cancer is a death penalty. Not being able to compete in the Boston Marathon when he’s fifty is an inconvenience. Go run 26.2 miles against your own time. Ain’t nobody stopping you. For someone who has been such a supporter of the 28 million people living with cancer worldwide, I thought this comparison was callous and selfish. Throughout this interview and any other, Mr. Armstrong has chosen his words wisely and sparsely. Though I think he had every intention of trying to elicit sympathy by comparing his lifetime ban from sport to a death penalty, I’m surprised that he didn’t also see the unfortunate correlation between cancer and a death penalty.

 

As far as a lifetime ban is concerned, I can’t think of anyone more deserving than Mr. Armstrong. Ignoring everything else and looking exclusively at his doping history, the evidence shows that he doped every day of his entire career. He admitted to most of the doping from the beginning of his career through 2005. Though he denies doping in 2009 and 2010, the evidence suggests there is a one in a million chance he didn’t. Yet when he sat down for this interview to confess, Mr. Armstrong thinks his sentence is too stringent and should be reduced. He notes that the other guys got six-month bans or retirement and “he got the death penalty.” He says that phrase several times. Well yes, except while the other guys cooperated with the USADA, Mr. Armstrong sued the USADA. The word he kept using to refer to himself was “defiant.” A man who is still in the beginning stages of appreciating the wrongfulness of his actions shouldn’t qualify for a reduced sentence. Mr. Armstrong admitted that during all of his years of doping, he never thought it was wrong. A man, who less than two months ago, tweeted a photo of himself and his seven yellow jerseys soon after the issuance of the lifetime ban, is too defiant to be compliant with the rules. That lifetime ban should stand.

 

Interestingly, there wasn’t nearly as much focus on LiveStrong as I had expected. For someone who has spent so many years being so passionate in his cause, he seemed rather distant and Oprah appeared horrified at times. “What do you say to all those people who believed?” her voice trebled with emotion. Mr. Armstrong rattled off a generic response starting with his usual routine: stare at the floor for two seconds, touch his lip, snap his head to look at Oprah, “I would start by saying I was wrong…” stare at shoe, touch lip, snap head, “…[and end by saying] I’m sorry.” Oprah can pull emotion out of a block of ice. I think she was surprised that he didn’t get more emotional when talking about how he had mislead the cancer community, because thanks to Mr. Armstrong cancer is now a community. The emotion did finally seep through the cracks when Oprah asked about how this has affected his children. It wouldn’t be a true athlete’s confession without a sob story involving the children. However, talking about an athlete’s family beyond just a passing comment feels invasive, so I’ll just simply say that Mr. Armstrong does tear up when talking about his children.

 

Oprah dropped the ball on one major question. She asks him if anyone knows the full truth and he says yes, then she goes back to asking him questions about his first wife, Kristin Armstrong. Who knows the full truth? That is probably the one follow-up question Oprah wishes she had asked. Mr. Armstrong then goes on to say that his first wife knew some things, but she didn’t know everything. I’m not going to fault a man for protecting his ex-wife. From a legal perspective, he and Ms. Armstrong have a confidentiality agreement. Ms. Armstrong has mentioned the existence of this contract many times before; it’s not a secret that it exists, just the details as to what can and cannot be said. Also, he is restricted in what he can say about her because of a possible defamation of character lawsuit. She’s a runner who works in the fitness industry as well. A detailed description of helping her then-husband dope could ruin her career and expose him to a lawsuit. Furthermore, she’s the mother of three of his children. It would be exceptionally bad form to criticize or cast her in a negative light.

 

At the conclusion of the interview, Oprah asked Mr. Armstrong if he would come back. He thought she meant comeback as in come back to sports. She re-emphasized by asking if he would rise again. This was his great opportunity to sell us on his sincerity and motivate us with an “I will rise again!” type speech. I think he fell short. He said several times that he knows he will spend the rest of his life trying to right the wrongs, but he flubbed the delivery. It came across as scripted, flat, and at times like the next thing to say was written on a notepad on the floor. The end was anticlimactic to say the least, but then after fourteen years, could it be anything less?

 

Note: Apologies for the sloppiness of this piece. I’m going out of town tomorrow morning and I wanted to get this out there in a timely fashion. G’night everyone. And as always, thank you for reading.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

The Rise and Fall of Lance Armstrong

In the second part of the interview with Lance Armstrong, Oprah talks about how much Americans love to watch their heroes rise to glory, becoming legends of mythic proportions, only to then revel in their demise. Well, duh. Mr. Armstrong wasn’t in the public eye against his wishes. He wanted to be there. He wanted to be famous. He wanted the attention of hundreds of millions of people. He probably wanted the attention of a billion people. He reaped at least $100 million in financial rewards because people were fascinated with him and he played into their fascination. Of course it should come as no surprise that when a few hundred million people are enraptured enough to care about your navel lint that they will become a frenzied swarm of sharks should anything bad happen in your life. When you’re earning nine figures because several hundred million people know who you are and buy the products you endorse, then I’m not going to feel sorry for you when you turn out to be a raging jackass and those once adoring mermaids turn into giant demon spawn squid and drag you into the depths of the ocean. When you avail yourself of the public interest, you avail yourself of all of it – good, bad, and expensive.

 

Except in this case, our mythic hero wasn’t destroyed by the people. As we say in Texas, he got too big for his britches. He couldn’t handle being outside of the limelight, so he came back, and this time, he wasn’t as careful. The skeptics were waiting for him at the front door. He didn’t have the beautiful buildup that people love to watch because that story had already been completed. He came back with an appearance of arrogance: I’m here to support the 28 million people living with cancer worldwide. It’s nice and all that these 180 guys are trying to make a living by racing the Tour de France, but I’m just here to ride my bike, get noticed, and talk about my foundation. By the way guys, I’m going to need you to stop wearing those team-issued kits and put on LiveStrong kits instead. Oh, I want to win too. I might’ve been able to take him more seriously if he had donated his salary to charity, but that would’ve been even more egotistical – I don’t need this few million dollars, which is more than half the team’s entire riders’ salary budget, so I’m just going to donate it to my charity instead of letting the other guys on the team get a bigger paycheck. Though I can appreciate the desire to promote a charitable cause, I thought his return as a professional came across as greedy and pompous. As far as I was concerned, his time in the spotlight had come and gone.

 

Mr. Armstrong made the perfect exit from professional cycling in 2005 with a forgettable

speech and a champagne toast. He should’ve stayed retired. He could’ve continued to raise money, raise awareness, and raise his glass at high-brow charity functions for decades without returning to the celebrity spotlight. But he needed to return to the sport so he did. Perhaps his fatal flaw is that the only strategy he knows how to employ is an attack – a vicious, relentless, ruthless attack. He doesn’t know how to play defense, play nice, or play shake hands and make allies. If we rewind the clock, I think the lynchpin in Mr. Armstrong’s downfall was the day he failed to recognize that because he had come back to the sport, he was vulnerable to doping accusations again, and Floyd Landis had enough information to sink him. Mr. Landis had defended Mr. Armstrong in his book, to the UCI, and the rest of the world. He served a two-year ban and wanted to return to the sport. Naturally, he did what any professional would do – he called up old contacts. If Mr. Armstrong hadn’t been so blinded by his own ego, then he would’ve seen that Mr. Landis was a liability with increasingly less to lose by going with the nuclear option. But, Mr. Armstrong’s playbook consists of only three moves: attack, attack harder, and annihilate. All he had to do was help Mr. Landis get a job, a token of gratitude for Mr. Landis’s silence. That’s all he had to do and he couldn’t recognize that someone else was holding the ace of spades. Then boom, Floyd Landis plays his last card, trumping Mr. Armstrong’s king high royal flush and everything begins to crumble.

 

Mr. Armstrong had one hell of a ride while the getting was good. He really did. I spent my summers watching the Tour de France with my father. I would be studying in my room and he would shout, “Lance is doing it again! There he goes! Come watch!” and I would run into the living room, plop down on the couch, and we would watch the blue train decimate the peloton. I barely understood cycling. No, that’s a lie. I didn’t understand cycling at all. But I knew that Lance Armstrong was a freakish badass. He wasn’t just an American kicking the French’s asses at their own sport; he was a Texan. Then I went on to graduate school and all of the guys were wearing LiveStrong bands. It was the functional equivalent to the James Avery charm ring when I was a girl. It was the mandatory accessory du jour. Can you believe that guy beat cancer and then he won the Tour de France three years later? All the jokes in the weight room. Dude, I need to get cancer so then I can come back as a mutant super human. No man, it’s the one ball. It makes him more aerodynamic. America’s obsession with cycling, but it wasn’t an obsession with cycling; it was an obsession with Lance Armstrong.

 

I can see why Oprah said she was “satisfied” with the interview. I am too. I’m satisfied because Mr. Armstrong showed himself to be a man who I shouldn’t feel any sympathy for. This isn’t a matter of punishing him enough. He had such a spectacular gain from the public’s obsession with him that I can’t feel sorry for him that the public’s now obsessed with the spectacular loss he’s experiencing. He triggered his own downfall. He deserves to endure the fallout.

 

A lifetime ban isn’t a “death penalty.” He is alive. He is alive and healthy, which is something that during a very dark period in his life, was a luxury that he could only hope to experience again. Right now, he is alive, healthy, and wealthy. I don’t know if he will be wealthy for much longer, but he sold his story in exchange for wealth on the way up; he can do the exact same on the way down. Whilst in the trenches of unemployment, precious few of us can take comfort in the fact that our words are worth millions.

 

Lance Armstrong vs Oprah Winfrey Round One

Leading up to this interview, there were some harsh speculations about Oprah’s ability to grill Lance Armstrong on the web of lies he spun throughout the duration of his career. A sick part of me really wanted Oprah to steamroll Lance Armstrong and I got what I was hoping for, but not with respect to hammering with the hard questions about doping, catching him on the squirrely answers, and making him ball-out say the words. Instead, she gave him enough rope and let him hang himself. Oprah keeps it classy. She may not have nailed him on all the lies, but she portrayed him as he is: a man with no moral compass, no comprehension that what he did was wrong beyond the mere ability to say the words “I doped and it was wrong.” He didn’t express an understanding of why doping was wrong and that people were hurt as a result, let alone that he should care that people were hurt. On top of it all, he still couldn’t resist an opportunity to take a cheap shot at Betsy Andreu.

 

Everything that you need to know about Lance Armstrong is elicited in his response to Oprah’s questions about Betsy Andreu.

 

Oprah asks Mr. Armstrong if Betsy was telling the truth about the hospital admission in 1996, when he told the doctors he used EPO, HGH, testosterone, corticosteroid, and steroids. He refused to discuss it saying that he’s “not going to take that one on.” Oprah asks if he’s made peace with Mrs. Andreu after he mentions taking to her on the phone recently. He says, “no, because they’ve been hurt too badly. A 40-minute conversation isn’t enough.” Oprah responds by saying of course not, because you repeatedly called her crazy and other horrible things.

 

Setup: Mr. Armstrong has just acknowledged that he knows she has been badly hurt by his words and actions.

 

Mr. Armstrong then proceeds to say in a joking tone that “he thinks Betsy would be ok if I said this: I never called her fat.” He admits to calling her a crazy bitch, but not a fat crazy bitch. This is what he says about a woman whom he has just admitted to hurting very badly. “I never called you fat.” Lame.

 

And here comes Oprah’s brilliance. She catches what he just said. She says to him that it’s interesting he sees it that way. She asks him if someone says three things that are true and one thing that isn’t true, does he take that to mean the whole thing is wrong? He says yes. The existence of one tiny cell of untruth is enough to contaminate the entire statement. If there is one grain of sand in a jar of salt, then it is wrong to say it is a jar of salt. This is how Mr. Armstrong thinks. Keep this in mind when you hear his responses to questions.   

 

Now apply this to everything Mr. Armstrong has ever said. Let’s just use the hospital example. If Mrs. Andreu’s recitation of the hospital scene isn’t 100% accurate according to Mr. Armstrong’s recollection and interpretation of the events, then he feels comfortable denying her claim in its entirety. This is why he was able to deny the accusations for so long, to sue people who were telling the truth, yet still manage to sleep at night with absolutely no sensation of guilt or remorse. In his mind, he was right. If he could find one molecule of wrong in something someone said about him, then everything they said was wrong, which meant he was right.

 

In the beginning, Oprah asks Lance Armstrong if, in his opinion, he thought it was possible to win the Tour de France without doping and then she pauses. His face looks ready to answer in the affirmative when she continues by saying “seven times in a row” and he immediately shakes his head and says no. There is a significant difference between winning the Tour de France once and winning the Tour de France seven times in a row.

 

Mr. Armstrong plays off the fact that most people make reasonable assumptions about statements. He knows that most people will hear him say “I don’t think it was possible to win the Tour de France seven times in a row without doping,” and truncate that statement to mean, “Lance Armstrong says it was impossible to win the Tour de France without doping.” He knows that everyone now has it in their mind that it wasn’t possible to win without doping, which he thinks ought to alleviate at least some of his culpability, if not all of it. Winning the Tour de France once without doping is not the same thing as winning the Tour de France seven times in a row without doping. If Oprah hadn’t added “seven times in a row,” I think Mr. Armstrong’s answer would’ve been “yes” instead of “no.”

 

When asked about pressuring his riders to dope, Lance Armstrong’s responses were squirrely and for good reason. He cannot admit to directly pressuring riders to dope, to firing riders for refusing to dope, or anything that implicates him as the ringleader of a doping conspiracy because that is the heart of the Department of Justice’s investigation, one that I suspect will be re-activated in the imminent future. Instead he says, “I was the leader and I led by example.” Oprah gets him to admit that he was a part owner of the team who had hiring and firing privileges written into his employment contract, and emphasizes that he was the rider the others looked up to. She drags all of the pieces together, but doesn’t outright say the sentence aloud. He was a part owner of the team; he had hiring and firing privileges; he lead by example and he doped; he had an expectation to win the Tour de France. It’s not possible that the riders didn’t feel any pressure from him to dope. But he cannot respond in the affirmation without exposing himself to substantial legal repercussions, the type that may involve a prison sentence.

 

Why didn’t Mr. Armstrong admit to doping during his comeback in 2009 and 2010? According the USASDA’s Reasoned Decisions, the likelihood of Lance Armstrong’s blood values from the 2009 and 2010 season occurring naturally were “one in a million.” I’m surprised he didn’t say, “I’m one a billion, so of course it could’ve occurred naturally. In fact, that means it is one thousand times more likely that my blood values occurred naturally than unnaturally.” But in truth, the reason Mr. Armstrong adamantly denied the allegations he doped during his comeback is that 2009 was less than four years ago, within the statute of limitations for a wide variety of legal claims. He can’t admit to doping during the relevant time period. He can’t admit to pressuring riders during his seven Tour de France victories because it will be presumed, and rightfully so, that he also pressured riders to dope in 2009 and 2010.

 

The extent to which Mr. Armstrong doesn’t think doping is wrong is evident in his defense of Dr. Ferrari. He refused to out Dr. Ferrari. He referred him a couple times as a very smart man and a very good man. He could’ve just refused to answer the question or dodged, but instead he extolled the virtues of the most notorious doping doctor in the history of cycling. One of these things does not line up with the other. I doped, doping was wrong, but the doctor who gave me all the drugs is a saint.

 

Why didn’t Mr. Armstrong out Dr. Michele Ferrari? Because Dr. Ferrari has all of Mr. Armstrong’s medical records, including those from 2009 and 2010, along with the medical records of half the peloton from that era. Though everyone says that the USADA owns Juan Pelota, the true owner of the world’s most famous testicle is Dr. Ferrari. Mr. Armstrong can’t say anything to piss off the good doctor otherwise those medical records might accidentally fall into the wrong hands. If Mr. Armstrong doped as recently as 2009 and 2010, he will have a very difficult time convincing the USADA to reduce his lifetime ban. If Mr. Armstrong doped in 2009 and 2010, he will be exposed to substantially more legal liability.

 

For me, the most telling moment of the degree of insincerity and the lack of remorse Mr. Armstrong has shown is his comment about apologizing to Emma O’Reilly. He includes her in a list of people who have been “run over” and that he has “reached out to directly” to apologize. Oprah asks him if he sued her. He laughs and says, “I don’t know; we sued a lot of people.” How can you apologize to someone if you can’t remember that you called her a whore, fired her, and then sued her?

 

Oprah: “Did it feel wrong? Was it a big deal to you?”

Lance: Shakes his head.

Oprah: “Did not even feel wrong.”

Lance: “Scary”

Oprah: “Didn’t feel bad about it?”

Lance: “No, even scarier.”

Oprah: “Didn’t feel like you were cheating?

Lance: “No, scariest.”

 

The scariest thing is that Mr. Armstrong doesn’t even know what cheating means. After his retirement, the allegations began to swirl around his victories. Mr. Armstrong says he didn’t think he was cheating, so he looked up the definition of “cheat” in the dictionary. He defines it as to “gain an advantage on a rival or foe,” which he didn’t think he was doing because he viewed the playing field as level. This is not what cheating means.

 

Note to all other future public confessors: if you’re going to say that you looked up the definition of a word, you should state the correct definition. It makes it look like you either lied about looking up the definition or you’re too stupid to remember the definition.

 

Per Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Cheat(v): To deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud; to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice; to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting.

Cheat (n): The act or an instance of fraudulently deceiving.

 

Of course Mr. Armstrong didn’t think he was “cheating,” because he doesn’t know what “cheating” actually means. Gaining an advantage on a rival or foe isn’t cheating. In fact, the definition of cheating doesn’t even require the cheater to have an advantage; it only means that the cheater used some element of wrongdoing in order to acquire something of value, such as seven Tour de France victories and the paychecks that came with them by breaking the rules.

 

In my opinion, Mr. Armstrong exchanges one set of problems for another by participating in this interview. From a legal perspective, he’s completely contradicted almost everything he’s said for the better part of the last fourteen years, including sworn testimony, which means he perjured himself. This means his credibility in court will be worthless, which will make it that much harder to defend himself against future claims. He’ll be defending his claim that he didn’t dope in 2009 and 2010 for the next five years. Why should we believe him? Blood values or not, he vehemently denied doping for fourteen years. Honesty is not something that is important to him. From a public relations perspective, he came across as irreverent, smug, and unaffected by the gravity of his actions. He needed to throw himself on his sword. Instead he ducked, dodged, and went through the motions. He hasn’t done the things that people who are sorry do. That would’ve been the perfect opportunity to address the audience directly and apologize for misleading them for so many years and to apologize personally to Betsy Andreu, Emma O’Reilly, David Walsh, and Greg LeMond. Actions speak louder than words.