An open letter to Lance Armstrong ++++ not a bad idea
Fred Bucephalus Birchmore
I had a whole long thing worked out. Complicated. Nuanced. An arrow
across time, it invoked Aquinas and Calvin and faith versus works,
Christian scripture and Aristotle and Gandhi. It called down the
ghosts of Morgan, Carnegie and Rockefeller and invoked the absolute
morality of American ethicists from Ralph Waldo Emerson to P.T.
Barnum. I threw it away.
Maybe this can save us instead. Maybe this can save us all:
Confess.
Did you see that Sunday stage of the Giro d'Italia? Mikel Nieve
winning in the Dolomites? Man, it was brutal. The steeps those last
few kilometers like climbing the walls of a prison, that 16 percent
grade, impossible, switchbacks like he's riding a spiral staircase.
Tough to watch, not knowing if he's going to win or simply gasp and
drop and die.
That's what we value most in our heroes though, isn't it? The ability
to exceed the rest of us. To risk. To do the hard thing. To show us
what's possible. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, to erase the
line between winning and dying.
[+] EnlargeArmstrong
Alex Wong/Getty ImagesLance Armstrong's efforts have made him a
spokesman for cancer research and survivors. That clout is at risk.
But you know that. And you know that's what you're up against.
Here, in the interest of full disclosure to readers beyond yourself,
I'll pause to note that I've never met you. Nor have I ever spoken to
you, on the record or off. I've swapped a handful of brief emails in
the past few weeks with an e-ddress I believe is yours. If it is not
-- if Global Lance Armstrong Worldwide Brands Incorporated has a
boiler room full of pleasant emailers and Tweeters and letter writers
somewhere in Jaipur or Mumbai or Paramus, N.J., engaged to correspond
with members of the jackal press like me -- I assume those emails
still reflect your general thoughts. I offered that email address a
chance to answer some questions for this column, and as of Monday, May
23 at 10 a.m. had received no reply.
So. "60 Minutes." And the counterattack. The synopsis from my
colleague Bonnie D. Ford, whose work on the matter is wide and deep. A
hard Sunday for everybody. But that peloton of lawyers is only going
to carry you so far.
If you did wrong by the standards of the sport, you're running out of
time. Once the indictments drop, this thing can't be fixed or walked
back or forgotten. Livestrong and the good it does are then at grave
risk. This may be your last chance to get in front of all this. Here's
how.
Use the truth. Call a news conference. At the United Nations. Explain
that cycling is corrupt from top to bottom, from east to west, always
has been, and that "performance enhancement" is an open secret, winked
at by the very bodies charged with oversight of the sport. That doping
is about money and fame and has a hundred-year history in the Grand
Tours and on the board tracks and that the rules of cycling -- and
every other sport on Earth -- are antiquated, contradictory and
hypocritical. And that you still beat 200 guys flat who were doped to
the gills seven years running in the Tour de France. The playing field
was level.
Let honesty be your defense. Confess your sins of pride or ambition or
hubris, arrogance or selfishness or appetite, sure, but remind us that
to pretend those human things don't exist in the world -- on Wall
Street or Main Street or the final approach to the Alpe d'Huez -- is a
failure nearly as great.
Confess to your weakness and play to your strength.
Admit that you broke a rule, but say that the rule itself is unjust.
Remind everyone around the world that medicine is only another kind of
human ingenuity, and that athletes under strict supervision should be
explorers, pharmanauts, on behalf of the rest of us. Ten years from
now, five, every aging Boomer in America with a bad back and a
discretionary income is going to be pestering the family doctor for
another refill of human growth hormone. We already spend $300 billion
a year in this country on legal drugs -- some of which are lifesaving,
some of which are nonsense, some of which are "performance enhancers"
like Botox or Viagra. Nearly a trillion gets spent worldwide.
Thus, in service of honesty, reality and the furtherance of the
species, announce the formation and funding of the Lance Armstrong
Institute for Athletic Excellence, an international organization under
the supervision of the UN secretariat devoted to the research and
promotion, theory and practice of ethical sports medicine worldwide.
This would become that panel of "philosophers and medical ethicists,
chemists, doctors, molecular biologists, biomechanical engineers,
quantum mathematicians, poets and scholars and kinesthesiologists" I
mentioned several weeks ago.
Trust me, the argument over the medical benefits and ethical
ramifications of "performance enhancement," cannot be left to sports
writers. We don't have the brains, the background or the stones for
the debate. Think of all this, then, all the upset and travail, as an
opportunity to inscribe an absolutely unimaginable honesty as your
legacy.
By coming clean, you could rewrite world sports overnight.
But brother, if you really did do everything on the square as you
claim -- every stage, every race, every win -- I apologize for ever
writing this. And I commend you for a mighty achievement.
If you didn't -- well, all any one of us has at the end of things is
our reputation. You and your foundation have done a lot of good in the
world, and Americans have an aptitude and a willingness to forgive.
Maybe that's enough.
But what we've always valued most in you is your ability to exceed us.
To do the hard thing. To ride up and out past what imprisons the rest
of us. To show us what's possible even when it's unimaginable.
Do that now if you can.
I send the regards of our small household, and hope this finds you
well.
Best,
MacGregor
Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine.
You can e-mail him at jeff_ma...@hotmail.com, or follow his
Twitter.com feed @MacGregorESPN.
RicodJour
> Twitter.com feed @MacGregorESPN.
Interesting. LA could say he stepped into a sport as a youngster and
was told that this is how the game is played. He could say that the
legends of the sport - old school 'un-tainted' legends - schooled him
on what needed to be done, and how to do it.
That would be a Hiroshima event in cycling. Amgen might be the only
sponsor that would stick around. Even bike makers might yank the
plug. Is there room for a Huffy Roadmaster at the top...?
R
ilan
Magazine."
Actually, he is a self-important nothing who doesn't understand due
process and is wasting space in his magazine writing letters which
contradict presumption of innocence.
-ilan
On May 23, 9:57 pm, Fred Bucephalus Birchmore
> You can e-mail him at jeff_macgre...@hotmail.com, or follow his
> Twitter.com feed @MacGregorESPN.
Fred Flintstein
> Interesting. LA could say he stepped into a sport as a youngster and
> was told that this is how the game is played. He could say that the
> legends of the sport - old school 'un-tainted' legends - schooled him
> on what needed to be done, and how to do it.
>
> That would be a Hiroshima event in cycling. Amgen might be the only
> sponsor that would stick around. Even bike makers might yank the
> plug. Is there room for a Huffy Roadmaster at the top...?
>
> R
No one cares about the dope.
Chris Herren has been in the news lately. Ever wonder how rigorous
dope testing in the NBA is? Well, if they did any testing at all...
any at all... even the shitty testing that baseball used to do that
was designed to not catch people, he'd have come up positive. Dunno,
maybe they weren't testing for smack.
But what we've learned from Barry Bonds and Chris Herren is that no
one cares about dope. Of any kind. The greatest sin is to be boring
to watch.
F
Substance McGravitas
> "Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The
> Magazine."
>
> Actually, he is a self-important nothing who doesn't understand due
> process and is wasting space in his magazine writing letters which
> contradict presumption of innocence.
>
> -ilan
>
I trip over this part: "If you did wrong by the standards of the sport..."
It implies that JM knows nothing about cycling and probably didn't even
watch the Tyler Hamilton interview.
Steve Freides
> Mr. Armstrong,
Dumbass,
He's not listening. Neither am I.
-S-
Frederick the Great
<2560ec70-be76-41be...@z13g2000prk.googlegroups.com>,
ilan <ila...@gmail.com> wrote:
> "Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The
> Magazine."
>
> Actually, he is a self-important nothing who doesn't understand due
> process and is wasting space in his magazine writing letters which
> contradict presumption of innocence.
Presumption of innocence is for the courtroom only; and
only for some of the principals. (Who expects counsel
for the prosecution to presume innocence?) Anyone else
is at liberty to assign guilt as he pleases, subject
only to the laws of slander and libel.
--
Old Fritz
ilan
> In article
> <2560ec70-be76-41be-b862-cb4dc3cd5...@z13g2000prk.googlegroups.com>,
>
> ilan <ilan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The
> > Magazine."
>
> > Actually, he is a self-important nothing who doesn't understand due
> > process and is wasting space in his magazine writing letters which
> > contradict presumption of innocence.
>
> Presumption of innocence is for the courtroom only; and
> only for some of the principals. (Who expects counsel
> for the prosecution to presume innocence?) Anyone else
> is at liberty to assign guilt as he pleases, subject
> only to the laws of slander and libel.
>
> --
> Old Fritz
Presumption of innocence is a basic right and as such, should also be
a general principle respected in civilized society. Gossip is fine for
internet forums where discussion and response is allowed, but I find
it unacceptable in a magazine editiorial.
-ilan
ilan
> In article
> <2560ec70-be76-41be-b862-cb4dc3cd5...@z13g2000prk.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > "Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The
> > Magazine."
>
> > Actually, he is a self-important nothing who doesn't understand due
> > process and is wasting space in his magazine writing letters which
> > contradict presumption of innocence.
>
> Presumption of innocence is for the courtroom only; and
> only for some of the principals. (Who expects counsel
> for the prosecution to presume innocence?) Anyone else
> is at liberty to assign guilt as he pleases, subject
> only to the laws of slander and libel.
>
> --
> Old Fritz
Why not just do what this French article does:
http://www.20minutes.fr/article/727906/langage-corporel-dsk-balance-entre-domination-soumission
That is, analyse the defendant's body language to determine guilt. As
a response, I want a video analysis proving that Lance's bike position
betrays his guilt? Oops, that was already done on French TV in 2005,
e.g., some supposed bike expert I've never heard of on TV station M6
showed as proof the fact that he was riding so fast up a hill that he
was actually coasting in the uphill turns! He neglected to show any of
his rivals who were riding 0.3 kph slower.
-ilan
Frederick the Great
<b705cf65-6354-4c38...@l26g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
ilan <ila...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 24, 10:07 pm, Frederick the Great <rub...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > In article
> > <2560ec70-be76-41be-b862-cb4dc3cd5...@z13g2000prk.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> > ilan <ilan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > "Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The
> > > Magazine."
> >
> > > Actually, he is a self-important nothing who doesn't understand due
> > > process and is wasting space in his magazine writing letters which
> > > contradict presumption of innocence.
> >
> > Presumption of innocence is for the courtroom only; and
> > only for some of the principals. (Who expects counsel
> > for the prosecution to presume innocence?) Anyone else
> > is at liberty to assign guilt as he pleases, subject
> > only to the laws of slander and libel.
>
> Presumption of innocence is a basic right and as such, should also be
> a general principle respected in civilized society. Gossip is fine for
> internet forums where discussion and response is allowed, but I find
> it unacceptable in a magazine editiorial.
Presumption of innocence as a basic right is your
opinion. Not that I disagree with you about gossip,
and so on. My opinion of how people should conduct
themselves is only my opinion, and not binding.
Gossip is damaging---most damaging to the gossiper.
--
Old Fritz
Frederick the Great
<bcfeafe1-2bb3-4470...@x6g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>,
ilan <ila...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 24, 10:07 pm, Frederick the Great <rub...@pacbell.net> wrote:
> > In article
> > <2560ec70-be76-41be-b862-cb4dc3cd5...@z13g2000prk.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> > ilan <ilan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > "Jeff MacGregor is a senior writer for ESPN.com and ESPN The
> > > Magazine."
> >
> > > Actually, he is a self-important nothing who doesn't understand due
> > > process and is wasting space in his magazine writing letters which
> > > contradict presumption of innocence.
> >
> > Presumption of innocence is for the courtroom only; and
> > only for some of the principals. (Who expects counsel
> > for the prosecution to presume innocence?) Anyone else
> > is at liberty to assign guilt as he pleases, subject
> > only to the laws of slander and libel.
>
> Why not just do what this French article does:
> http://www.20minutes.fr/article/727906/langage-corporel-dsk-balance-entre-domination-soumission
>
> That is, analyse the defendant's body language to determine guilt. As
> a response, I want a video analysis proving that Lance's bike position
> betrays his guilt? Oops, that was already done on French TV in 2005,
> e.g., some supposed bike expert I've never heard of on TV station M6
> showed as proof the fact that he was riding so fast up a hill that he
> was actually coasting in the uphill turns! He neglected to show any of
> his rivals who were riding 0.3 kph slower.
Everybody lies. We do not need proof.
--
Old Fritz