Lance Armstrong
America’s Sacrificial Lamb
The Post Office is suing Lance Armstrong to get back the many millions of dollars he earned promoting the U.S. Post office at their request. There's nothing like kicking a man when he's down, is there?
I don't believe the Post Office has any business suing Lance Armstrong, because they sponsored him to get PUBLICITY, and while Lance was riding high (literally! ;-), they got exactly what they paid for.
I, personally, believe that Lance was singled out for persecution because:
1. He is an exceptionally good-looking blond, blue-eyed WHITE American male –– an iconic figure
2. He beat the French at their own game repeatedly
3. He was heroic in his successful effort at beating cancer, when it looked as though advanced stage cancer was about to claim his life, and then had the unmitigated gall to use his fame to try to hearten and give hope to other victims of the disease. That really stank out loud, didn't it? Boy oh Boy! What a cheap, self-aggrandizing trick that was! PHEW!
Lance didn't do anything that the other serious contenders for the championship were not doing, themselves, ergo it was wrong to single him out for persecution WITHOUT HOLDING ALL THE OTHERS WHO DID THE SAME THING EQUALLY CULPABLE and EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE.
I am morally certain that if Lance had been an AFRICAN-American, a JEWISH-American, an HISPANIC-American, an ASIAN-American, a NATIVE-American, or a Frenchman, a Moroccan or a Tunisian, etc. little or nothing would have been said or done about the matter.
Remember the jokey old complaints about being arrested for "Driving While BLACK?"
Well, today that old worm has been artfully, craftily turned.
It is now considered not only unfashionable and undesirable to be WHITE, it is also considered reprehensible ––- especially if the Caucasian in question is Aryan –– blond, blue-eyed, handsome, clean cut, of regal bearing, and has distinguished himself on the world's stage.
The shame attendant on being Caucasian is doubled and redoubled in spades if the Caucasian in question should happen to be (GASP!) an AMERICAN.
"Someone" always has to get the dirty end of the stick, don't they? It's just WHITE AMERICA’S turn now.
I, personally, believe that Lance was singled out for persecution because:
1. He is an exceptionally good-looking blond, blue-eyed WHITE American male –– an iconic figure
2. He beat the French at their own game repeatedly
3. He was heroic in his successful effort at beating cancer, when it looked as though advanced stage cancer was about to claim his life, and then had the unmitigated gall to use his fame to try to hearten and give hope to other victims of the disease. That really stank out loud, didn't it? Boy oh Boy! What a cheap, self-aggrandizing trick that was! PHEW!
Lance didn't do anything that the other serious contenders for the championship were not doing, themselves, ergo it was wrong to single him out for persecution WITHOUT HOLDING ALL THE OTHERS WHO DID THE SAME THING EQUALLY CULPABLE and EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE.
I am morally certain that if Lance had been an AFRICAN-American, a JEWISH-American, an HISPANIC-American, an ASIAN-American, a NATIVE-American, or a Frenchman, a Moroccan or a Tunisian, etc. little or nothing would have been said or done about the matter.
Remember the jokey old complaints about being arrested for "Driving While BLACK?"
Well, today that old worm has been artfully, craftily turned.
It is now considered not only unfashionable and undesirable to be WHITE, it is also considered reprehensible ––- especially if the Caucasian in question is Aryan –– blond, blue-eyed, handsome, clean cut, of regal bearing, and has distinguished himself on the world's stage.
The shame attendant on being Caucasian is doubled and redoubled in spades if the Caucasian in question should happen to be (GASP!) an AMERICAN.
"Someone" always has to get the dirty end of the stick, don't they? It's just WHITE AMERICA’S turn now.
The world, now sadly dominated by the faux-egalitarian precepts of Marxism demands we do penance for having been who we were. The process if self-destruction involves rewriting history to cast our country in the role of Bad Guy, discrediting our Founding Fathers, then getting the dirt on our champions and highest achievers in order to topple them from their pedestals and gleefully watch them get trampled under the mud-caked boots of the proletariat led by latest incarnation of the Pharisees.
~ FreeThinke
I don't see a witch hunt in the case of Lance Armstrong. Cheating is cheating. Doping is cheating. And pretending he didn't dope is lying.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree that race or skin colour is the issue either. I can recall one instance of a black runner from Jamaica being stripped of a gold medal because he was caught doping. Of course he wasn't running for the land of affirmative action, the United States of America, but for a close neighbouring country—Canada.
Since Marxism seems to be a side topic here, I'm thinking I might as well import a comment I left late in the game yesterday on Z's blog. It was addressed to Ducky and didn't seem to attract a comment. Maybe it will be received better (or worse) here ...
ReplyDeleteApparently Ducky believes that Karl Marx was an original thinker, an original in his evil ways. I hate to disabuse you Ducky but it seems clear that Marx and Engels had someone who got to them and provided them with his thinking which they adopted.
"Moses Hess quickly transformed young Marx into a freemason, a socialist agitator and his minion. Marx was still no communist.
He wrote in Rheinische Zeitung, which he edited during the years 1842-43:
"Attempts by masses to carry out Communist ideas can be answered by a cannon as soon as they have become dangerous..."
He then believed these ideas to be impracticable. Moses Hess essentially corrected all these opinions. He became the grey eminence behind Marx, intensively guiding and influencing his protégé's work."
"Karl Marx's worship of violence was strengthened by a Frankist communist whom he met in 1841, when he was 23 years old. This man was called Moritz Moses Hess. Moses Hess was born on the 21st of June 1812 in Bonn, the son of a wealthy Jewish industrialist. He died on the 6th of April 1875 in Paris and is buried in Israel. It can be mentioned that he founded the German Social Democratic Party."
"Engels had also expressed Christian ideas in his youth:
"I thirsted for a connection with God. My religion was and is a peaceful and blessed world and I should be pleased with it if it were to be with me also after my funeral. I have no reason to suppose God should take it away from me. Religious persuasion is a thing of the heart. I pray every day, indeed almost all day, for truth.
I seek the truth everywhere, even where I hope to find just a shadow of it. Tears are welling forth as I write this. I am moved through and through, but I feel I will not be lost. I will come to God, for whom my whole soul longs."
(Marx and Engels, "From Early Works", Moscow, 1956, p. 306.)"
From that Engels turned and became something more sinister accompanied by Marx. A devout early Zionist, Moses Hess shows some fire not only for Zionism but for "the proletariat".
"In his "Red Catechism for the German People", Moses Hess revealed:
"The socialist revolution is my religion."
"Moses Hess wrote to the Jewish socialist leader Ferdinand Lasalle:
"I use the sword against anyone who opposes the struggle of the proletariat."
""Whoever denies Jewish nationalism is not only an apostate, a renegade in the religious sense, but also a traitor to his people and to his family."
(Moses Hess, "Selected Works", Cologne, 1962.)"
Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Roger Clemens.
ReplyDeleteThings are seldom what they are purported to be by The Establishment, Waylon.
ReplyDeleteWhenever that crowd gangs up on ANYONE for ANY reason, I simply don't believe what they say.
There's a clearly discernible "PATTERN" in these Derogation Derbies. I described it pretty well in the article.
Either you see it, or you don't. We're all entitled to our opinions however contradictory they may be.
" ... WITHOUT HOLDING ALL THE OTHERS WHO DID THE SAME THING EQUALLY CULPABLE and EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE."
ReplyDelete---
Pretty clear you don't follow cycling but only read the headlines about Armstrong.
if Lance had been an AFRICAN-American, a JEWISH-American, an HISPANIC-American, an ASIAN-American, a NATIVE-American, or a Frenchman, a Moroccan or a Tunisian, etc. little or nothing would have been said or done about the matter.
ReplyDeleteMaybe.
But I do totally agree with this point you made, FT:
I don't believe the Post Office has any business suing Lance Armstrong, because they sponsored him to get PUBLICITY, and while Lance was riding high (literally! ;-), they got exactly what they paid for.
Here's what I want to know....Have "discredited" individuals of other races and ethnic groups ever been sued in such a manner? If they have been, I haven't heard about it.
Is Pepsi Corporation suing the estate of Michael Jackson?
ReplyDeleteIt is a FACT that doping was (is) commonplace. It is done by elite atheletes to gain COMPETIVE advantage. Doing so means oftentimes literally millions to the athlete(s) in income. And endorsements. Look to society rather than the athelete who is responding to societies expectations of ELITE athletes.
ReplyDeleteI don't neccessarily agree with your analysis with respect to the issue being Lance 's whiteness. I do agree he is being singled out for the "crime" many in cycling and other sports have committed and thus unjustly. The Postal Service is wrong and you are correct in pointing it out FreeThinke.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteLance Armstrong deserves every grief levied upon him. He had the hubris to SUE the US Anti-Doping Agency before ADMITTING to doping...
ReplyDeleteHubris... Nemesis WILL punish you.
Thersites,
ReplyDeleteHe had the hubris to SUE the US Anti-Doping Agency before ADMITTING to doping...
Are you kidding me?
I missed that little detail along the way.
"The best defense is a good attack," Thersites.
ReplyDeleteAOW, doping bans have been issued in the last ten years for cyclists from Argentina to Kazakhstan and every country in between. Probably over a hundred major cyclists caught in the last decade.
ReplyDeleteIf you aren't aware of the level of doping in cycling you should hold back a little.
Armstrong was prosecuted because he denied the doping. He lied through his teeth and threw people under the bus in order to maintain that lie.
He distinctly deserves his censure and isn't the great white hope that FT apparently longs for.
Please don't respond to the trolls -- or the fools.
ReplyDeleteNever fear, I will sanitize the blog, myself, periodically.
Yeah FT, I got ya. However, everyone has their level of tolerance. The Anon Troll, and I know who he is, has followed me from blog to blog regurgitating his lies and hatefull BS for the past two years. So please forgive my justifiable response to his obsessive BS in his attempt to sully my good name. Hopefully you understand. If not I guess I am in the wrong company.
DeleteGood Day Mr. FT.
Good Day FT.
ReplyDeleteLance Armatrong is hubris personified...
ReplyDeleteLike the criminal who sues the Prosecuting Attorney to prevent an iminent indictment.
A "good" offense is one thing, FT, a bold pack of lies ito obfuscate the real issues s quite another.
And you of all folks would certainly know wouldn't you Thersites?
DeleteHubris is an affliction of the powerful, rn, by definition.
ReplyDeleteThersites, by definition, is not amongst them. It is his lot, like that of Ajax, to be driven crazy by the gods.
And like Achilles, I suggest you seek purification for slighting him.
Purification Thersites is not anything I find myself interested in at this time.
ReplyDeleteThe Gods of Greek Mythology, while perhaps more sane than other Gods are, well, like all others Gods. A mere figment of human imagination and the human need for faith which is course driven by human weakness.
I prefer true spirituality if you don't mine. Have a marvelous evening.
I don't mine.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure that you aren't meerly a figment of some quasi-literate demi-god's imagination, RN?
For In the beginning, there was aphanisis... such is the fate of the gods. ;)
ReplyDeleteBack to some of the subject of the post:
ReplyDeleteAs Ducky said, in the professional peleton of cycling, bending rules and forms of cheating are said to have been a way of life going back decades.
Is Lance's case different from past cyclists, baseball and track and field athletes who have fallen from grace?
It looks like it may be.
Former teammates of Armstrong reportedly have shared information that goes beyond one rider making some poor decisions. There are reports Lance blew the whistle on other riders in the professional peleton, essentially turning them in to testing authorities. There are 1000 pages to this effect from the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) testimony.
As well, that Lance threatened other riders, sued newspapers for reporting on his doping activities, and, he won millions of dollars in those lawsuits after testifying in court, under oath, about being clean. He may be guilty of perjury.
People in the know, in and out of cycling, say Lance’s biggest deceit may not have been drug taking or breaking of rules. Apparently, he was threatening other athletes for their silence. Some even suggest he exerted his influence on governing bodies. An analogy would be threatening a whistle blower at work or in government. There is a lot of onus and responsibility that has to be accounted for.
On the flip side, I was a huge Armstrong fan since 2001 when my daughter was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and underwent eleven months of chemotherapy and radiation. I held Lance as an example; not only his survival, but his fight to survive, his courage, his work with others, his unbelievable story of sporting success; and of course the Livestrong Foundation. I stayed up at night and read his books with her.
Sad, all the way around.
I love the "everybody does it" defense of the indefensible. Says a lot about the forseeable future of the sport... in the persecution of those who attempt tp clean it up.
ReplyDeleteAs they say in Sparta, "Wrestle naked,"
ReplyDelete...not quite a catchy as "Surf Naked", I'll admit.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the everybody does it excuse is not a good excuse.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't a good excuse as a kid or as a teenager to go against family rules or values.
And it is not a good excuse for a cheating professional athlete who is doping or an IRS tax cheat.
Four examples. Agree with all or some?
Thersites - I don't mine.
ReplyDeleteOf course the mine is my typo. Should have been MIND.
Thersites - Are you sure that you aren't meerly a figment of some quasi-literate demi-god's imagination, RN?
Of course I realize you meant merely as opposed to "meerly."
And since you brought it up are you sure you're not merely a figment of someones imagination Thersites?
KP - You have certainly presented Lance in a different light and you have done so without prejudice or casting judgement. Kudos to you for that. Your points are well presented and as such merit further consideration of this issue.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't you agree FT?
Thanks, RN.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, I am against cheating in sport.
I am not in favor of the type of white collar crime that results from cheating in sport or Wall Street BS.
I recommend a clean tax return (the good sleep is priceless).
I don't recommend kids climb out their windows at might (I did a few times).
Lance really really screwed up. He knows it.
I don't think the Postal Service will prevail in court.
Wasn't there a drugs clause in his contract with the postal service?
ReplyDeleteI am solely the figment of my imagination, RN... you're not?
ReplyDeleteCogito ergo sum.
ReplyDeleteApparently, a mine that could dream up a "Perfect" being is considered by you to be weak and needy... but a mine that could imagine "you" is perfectly "rational".
ReplyDeleteG-d does love His little jokes. :)
Hi jez -
ReplyDeleteFrom a post on Let's Run:
This isn't a simple contract dispute, between two parties: Lance and the US Government. It's a claim of a violation of the "False Claims Act", that Landis filed against Armstrong and others, that they defrauded the US government.
The Justice Department is not suing Lance, per se, but joining Landis' whistleblower lawsuit against Lance and others.
Named defendents: Armstrong, Bruyneel, Thomas Weisel, Armstrong’s agent Bill Stapleton and Barton Knaggs (Jim Ochowicz?)
Named organizations: Tailwind Sports, Montgomery Sports and Capital Sports and Entertainment. Role of USA Cycling also questioned.
The complaint is that: "the defendants submitted or caused to be submitted claims for payment to the USPS with knowledge that the USPS Team was engaged in doping and other wrongful conduct in violation of the terms of the sponsorship contracts."
Other riders were not sued by Landis, because, although they also doped, and likely violated their contracts, they did not "submit, or cause to be submitted" false claims for money to the US Government.
While the question of damages is important, it is not the only one. The Justice Department is seeking "triple damages", but even if no damage is proven, there is also the question of "unjust enrichment". The remedy for "unjust enrichment" is to make restitution. They may have to pay all of the money back, regardless of liability of wrong-doing. Damages are a legal remedy, to compensate for loss, while restitution is an equitable remedy, to compensate for unjust gains.
I understand your morally pure, idealistic thinking, KP, but I am STILL quite certain that what is being done to Lance is largely a trumped up VENDETTA born of professional jealousy for the reasons I outlined in the article.
ReplyDeleteWe live in a cynical, relentlessly debunking GOTCHA! age. No one respects the truth anymore.
This would never have happened, if Lance had not been such an heroic, attractive, enormously charismatic figure.
He's the victim of a bunch of "tattletales" and who could possibly know for certain that THEY are telling the truth?
This whole affair is highly reminiscent of The Children's Hour, a play by Lillian Hellmann later made into a movie with Audrey Hepburn, Shirley Maclaine, Fay Bainter and Miriam Hopkins in the key roles. Are you familiar with it? It was based on a true incident that occurred in France, and teaches a great lesson in the tragic results treachery and moral blindness in human character may produce.
Good God! One day after you muse about Lance Armstrong being a sacrificial lamb because he's white, along comes the CBC, the mothership, and national publicly owned broadcaster in Canada with a job posting for an opening which any male except Caucasian may apply. I guess the storm of nasty blowback made them recant, but ... just sayin'— you must have had your nose to the wind to suss out that sort of scoop, FT.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.torontosun.com/2013/04/30/cbc-removes-any-race-except-caucasian-line-from-job-posting
"This would never have happened, if Lance had not been such an heroic, attractive, enormously charismatic figure."
ReplyDeleteThat is probably true. Kind of like politics!
Through amusing yourself yet Thersites? If not please continue on.
ReplyDeleteKP, and it would not have happened had he not thrown others under the bus...
ReplyDeleteMy son covers cycling professionally and your thoughts ring pretty true to him...
Dave, so true. He was the classic mob/bully mentality. The polar opposite of cheating team mate George Hincapie.
ReplyDeleteFloyd Landis and Tyler Hamilton were also teamates at the time and rolled with his story until they were destroyed by being caught cheating. After years of fighting sanctions and millions of dollars spent they had nothing else to lose.
Then we see George Hincape; the nicest, sweetest guy, who will escape mostly unharmed; just as much a doper.
Four white American cycling heroes from the same teams (Lance, Tyler, Floyd and Georege); three destroyed by doping/cheating (Lance, Tyler, Floyd), two on the rampage in tell all books about Lance (Tyler and Floyd), and one relatively unscathed (George).
All testified in the case against Lance and were themselves dopers.
Mere facts, KP. ;-)
ReplyDeleteWell, you've actually supported most of my contentions, KP. I've never said Lance was The Perfect Man, but I see many parallels to the case of Richard Nixon, who was also crucified by a vicious bunch of partisan brigands who were much worse than he, Nixon, ever dreamed of being.
ReplyDeleteOld Jez up there like most leftists just loves "facts," but he seems to have little ability to relate them to The Big Picture.
Scoff if you like, but if you can't "read between the lines" and understand the implications of much of these News Machine Obsessions of the Day, you have little understanding of human nature, and the vast treachery of which it -- and all of us -- are capable.
Shkespeare, as always said it well:
"The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. ..."
And so, I suspect will it be with Lance Armstrong. America is much the poorer for the shattering his image by jealous, mean-spirited colleagues. All we have, by the way is THEIR allegations. No one has this stuff in videotape, do they?
I thought not!
I like that Nixon analogy. I happen to think Nixon was, in many ways, one of our better Presidents. And I know Lance was one of the greatest cyclist, if not the greatest, who ever lived. Like I have said before, I hate some of the things Lance has done but I will not be a Lance hater.
ReplyDelete