Opinion Time: Lance Armstrong

It just occurred to me how absurd it is that as a person with a blog, I haven’t even commented on Lance Armstrong and all his lying and cheating.  I mean, I even majored in philosophy.  I should definitely be the one getting to the bottom of this issue and figuring out once-and-for-all if Armstrong is a good person, a bad person, an okay person, or a person we should ignore.  But I’m not.  Instead, I haven’t said much about it at all, because the whole situation kind of sucks, and I think Lance is getting way too much attention.  I’ll fix this now (the issue of my not saying enough about it, not the issue of Lance getting too much attention… I’m making that one worse).

First of all, a whole bunch of these cyclists were doping, probably a lot more than ever confessed to it.  This kind of lowers credibility of the sport as a whole, which is unfortunate because most people don’t know much about it to begin with, but the people I know who are serious cyclists are amazing athletes with a lot of integrity.  Can we just move on from Lance, and pick a new cycling hero that doesn’t lie/cheat?

Okay, I know you don’t want to forget about Lance, because he’s done so much for charity with the whole Livestrong thing.  Does this mean we think that charities can’t be wildly successful without a champion athlete representing the whole thing?  I’m pretty sure other charities have managed it.  Armstrong also seems like he must be a pretty good business man and could have done some impressive work even without the doping funny-business.  You don’t have to win the Tour-de-France to invent a yellow rubber wristband.

I’ve had more thoughts on the Lance thing recently, but I’m going to stop there, because I’m already sick of watching myself blog about him.  I’ll just end with the statement that I officially hate it when people cheat and then lie about it.  If you’re going to cheat, at least tell everyone so we can avoid all of this hubbub.  And if you’re going to lie, don’t be so famous, because otherwise you might let a ton of people who respected and looked up to you be really disappointed.

On the upside, morally deficient people like Armstrong do set a very low ethical standard, so people like me can feel really great for going at least a week without lying or cheating at anything (and much longer since doing both at the same time).  And so in that way and that way only, I am grateful to you, Lance Armstrong!