It's not the crime; it's the cover-up

[supergee]

I don't take sports doping all that seriously. Yeah, it's cheating, and they shouldn't do it, but there's a lot of worse stuff going on. Yesterday, the NY Post front page said that Lance Armstrong was one of the worst liars in all human history. This from a paper that enthusiastically cheered on the George W. Bush lies that got thousands of people killed in Iraq. I was closer to what Charlie Pierce said:

The man beat Stage Four cancer that began in his balls and spread to his brain, and I'm supposed to stop admiring him because, for the purpose of winning a bike race, he may have arranged to use too much of his own blood?

On the other hand, it appears that in order to cover up for the doping, Armstrong set out to ruin the lives of anyone who had the goods on him. Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses.

Comments

[weofodthignen]

Ah, sports. It builds character and Fair Play. All sportspeople are wonderful human beings whom we should admire.

There should be a way to program one's computer so one never gives these people any attention ever again.

[necturus]

The whole Lance Armstrong affair strikes me as very Stalinist; one day he's at the pinnacle of his career, and then next he's accused of Trotskyism and everything he's ever achieved in his life is expunged from the collective memory.

The advertisers who sponsored the races made all the money they could have made, and so did the media outlets that covered it. You can't say the USPS didn't get their money's worth by sponsoring Lance Armstrong. Who, then, were the victims of this supposed fraud? His competitors? But none of them were declared winners in his pace, because supposedly they all cheated.

But if everyone cheats, then the rules are meaningless.