Calhoun's Cannons for Jan 18, 2013
Oh, Lance, just go away.
Shoo. You're a liar and a cheat
and a fraud. Worse, you sued and trashed and defamed and injured
people who dared tell the truth about you. You effectively turned your sport into
a laughingstock and brought your own charity into disrepute. Now you run and plop yourself down on America's
premiere confessional -- Oprah's couch
-- and boo-hoo that you're so sorry and now can you please be allowed to return
to racing, please, please?
No. You can't. You're an idiot. Go away.
Good Lord. Have we
all gone mad? I mean, bicycle racing? Really? Well, Lance is not alone. The Baseball Hall of fame recently inducted
exactly zero new players because the proposed list was nothing but dopers and
cheats. It's a punishment uniquely
suited: In a sport obsessed with stats, the numbers racked up by these
steroid-filled sausages are now forever tainted. Though some of the more addicted fans are
still hedging. After all, they say, a
number is a number. Yes, it is. So why not just make up all the numbers in
the first place? After all, once you divorce a true, clean performance from a
number, it's all meaningless.
In 1919, when Shoeless Joe Jackson had to admit that he
fixed a world series for money, the world was genuinely shocked. How quaint.
Nowadays, nobody is shocked because everybody knows that it's all about
the money. That's what drives our whole sick, faked-up sports enterprise. Not the sport itself, not sportsmanship, not
personal best, not achieving a goal.
Money. Win the Tour de France and
you're worth a bundle, baby. Lose it and
you're a nobody lost in the pack, working a day job so you can buy flat tire
repair kits.
Bulk up and smash your brain into early senility (or
brain-damaged suicide) on the gridiron and get that million dollar
contract. Ruin your body with steroids
to get those out-of-the-ball-park hits and the majors come calling with sacks
of money. Do neither, simply play the game clean, and you're bupkis. That's the
way the fans like it. More, more, more,
higher, faster, harder. The more violence, blood, and excitement, the more the
branded merchandise sells! And if
there's a price to pay, well you can be sure the fans won't be paying it. The athletes will. They're our bought-and-paid-for gladiators
and they're expendable once their sell-by date passes.
Grist for the great American Corporate/Entertainment
mill. Movie stars dying of alcoholism
are jeered at on the blogosphere and
splashed all over the tabloids because their dying sells those papers,
baby. A deranged
bullet-through-the-heart football player requests his brain be autopsied to
prove the obvious: football head injuries are killing the players. He hopes maybe his death will bring about a
change in the skyboxes. It won't.
And Lance Armstrong,
not content with the extraordinary feat of overcoming cancer and winning a Tour
de France, has to dope so he can do it again and again and again, like some
coke addicted rat pushing the food-pellet bar, unable to stop, until it dies of
sheer exhaustion. And the fans and the
sponsors and the press ate it up, fed his addiction, wanted more, more, more
and willed themselves to believe that this was all true because it was such a
wonderful fairy story with such a happy ending.
Trompe l'oeil as Triomphe du monde!
Instead of knowing it
was all too good to be true, knowing that life doesn't operate like that, knowing
that the Tour de France is such a brutally hard race that the odds are stacked
against anyone winning it twice ever, let alone winning it seven times
in a row.
And so we end up on Oprah's Couch and America
is asked once again, Do we keep the whole killing fake fantasy game going? Or call it? Since it's all about the money, I
know which way America
will roll.
But for me, it's simple.
Lance, here's a paper bag. Put it
over your head. You're an idiot. Now, go away.
Thank you.
Posts
5 comments:
A lot of insight here, Ann. We worship people who bully their own bodies and the system that bullies them into doing it--with steroids, cocaine, cigarettes, whatever. (Many movie stars still smoke: It's how they stay that unnaturally skinny.) We have a culture that admires and rewards bullying. (Look at the bullies in the GOP who won't allow moderate Republicans to vote the way their constituents want.) No wonder we can't protect our kids from bullies on the schoolyard.
Two things that I'd rather watch a snail race or paint drying. Baseball and bicycle racing. How desperate do you need to be for entertainment?
Once "sports" got separated from "sportsmanship" and the sense of it being a "game," it simply became all about the money -- which is what America has become money, fame, power . . . by any means necessary.
Lance's interview (pt. 1) was so interesting because he made it clear that the reason he didn't think he was cheating is because cheating was defined as getting an unfair advantage. Since so many of the top riders were cheating already, if he cheated he wasn't getting an "unfair advantage," he was simply leveling the playing field. Doping had become the new norm. Ya wanna win? You dope.
Mike, while the Tour de France is rather silly to watch (stand by the side of the road for hours then see a gaggle of riders zip by in 60 seconds, go home) the race itself is so brutal and challenging that it rather takes the breath away that anyone would be crazy enough to do it in the first place. Even run clean, it's an incredible feat.
Are there steroids for writers? I want some ;)
Sandra: Haha, no, but lots of drugs and alcohol which too many writers use until it burns them out and they're shambling wrecks&hacks then toast. Better stick with yoga and organic veggies.
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