Last night, Lance Armstrong appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Network to admit doping, leaving millions of curious Americans scurrying to figure out what channel the Oprah Winfrey Network is on.
When they finally located the program, they watched an overly composed Armstrong admit that he lied and cheated throughout his entire career, and that he casually pursued the destruction of everyone who dared shed light on the truth. His main regret seemed to be that he mounted a 2009-2010 comeback that led to him being caught.
But what’s most remarkable to me about Armstrong is that he founded and led a cancer awareness organization, while exhibiting only the most tenuous cancer awareness of his own.
Armstrong almost died of testicular cancer. He even had one testicle removed because of it. How did he respond to this challenge? He wrapped his one remaining ball in the sporting world’s most constricting shorts and unrelentingly crushed it against a rigid bicycle seat for six hours a day.
In moderation, cycling can be fun and healthy. But it’s a horrible career choice for someone who’s already had testicular cancer. Riding bikes for long periods occupationally has been shown to be bad for the reproductive health of people like bicycle cops.
And one study of male mountain bikers published in The Lancet found that 96 percent of them had scrotal abnormalities such as calcium deposits, cysts, and twisted veins. They should probably just change the name of the Tour de France to the Frankenballs Run.
How else did Armstrong respond to his cancer? By taking a raft of performance-enhancing drugs that definitely weren’t prescribed by his oncologist. He pretty much did the exact opposite of what a sensible cancer survivor focused on staying alive would do.
For this reason, Lance Armstrong is the worst possible figurehead for a cancer awareness organization. He’s a better fit for a group that hands out cigarettes to lung cancer patients, or one that enters people with stomach cancer in pickle-eating contests.
His foundation may have helped a lot of people, but playing the cancer card also made Lance Armstrong over an estimated $100 million. There’s no way he would ever make anywhere near that much in a sport boasting almost no spectator appeal without the cancer angle. He lied and cheated to earn every penny of it. And he clogged our nation’s courts with defamation lawsuits aimed at people he knew were telling the truth.
More importantly, he helped hurtle sport headlong toward a future where champions will not be determined by talent and tenacity, but by their ability to withstand and respond favorably to a demanding drug regimen.
- The athlete of the future?
With his unearned millions, his undeserved resume of bedding Hollywood starlets, and his seeming lack of regret, Lance Armstrong embodies all that has gone wrong with America. Properly punishing him is a minor, symbolic, but necessary step in transforming our nation from a cesspool of crony capitalism into the meritocracy we all want.
To do this, I suggest the following four-point plan:
1. To continue operations and retain its nonprofit status, the Livestrong Foundation should be renamed to eliminate any reference to Lance Armstrong. The highly selective and charitable Our Founder bio of Armstrong on the organization’s website should also be removed.
2. All the earnings that Lance Armstrong earned through cheating and deception should be seized. Organizations such as Nike and race promoters need not be repaid, since they profited handsomely from Armstrong’s popularity. Instead, this money should be distributed in the form of government grants to programs that provide free cancer screenings.
3. To keep Armstrong far from the public eye, Matthew McConaughey should be pressured to disavow his enduring bromance with Armstrong. Should he ever be again be photographed frolicking with Armstrong in a shirtless workout of any kind, McConaughey’s movies should be subject to a public boycott.
4. Finally, Armstrong should be banished to a newly established Isle of Boring Sports, along with Tiger Woods and everyone from NASCAR. There, they will live out their lives in quiet anonymity, never to tarnish our sports recap programs again.
Through these actions, hopefully we can finally move on from this whole debacle and get back to debating issues of substance. Like Honey Boo Boo.