the lance armstrong debacle

i don't feel like this is so much a defense of lance armstrong... it's more like a, 'what's the matter with everything else in the world,' sorta thing. so here goes.

lance armstrong is a cheater. he cheated... and he lied... for years. after over a decade of rumors and hearsay and doubt, that all seems to have come to an end. he's guilty of cheating, case closed. from here on in, you will never again hear me say, "maybe he didn't cheat. no one  knows for sure." (though i do take issue with the drug testing methods of bicycling. they tested him plenty of times and never once did he come up positive. but hey, that's drug testing for you... always a step behind the trailblazers, which i guess armstrong can be considered now... a true pioneer in fooling the system).

what i will say is trotting around the mountains of france on a bicycle for three weeks is no easy feat and winning a three week long race through those mountains seven times is both ridiculous and epic. sure, armstrong cheated and that helped. but it wasn't the drugs alone. most of us can't wake up tomorrow, get into blood doping, and win a tour de france. not happening. even if he cheated, it's still a crazy accomplishment (and if you feel uptight about the whole thing after reading that, no worries, they stripped him of all his accolades anyways. take comfort in that, jerk).

but that's all besides the point i really wanna make here. what i can't wrap my head around is why people are either hurt or angry or disappointed. i mean i sorta get it, but i think people put too much faith in other people, especially those they don't know. most lance armstrong fans didn't know the dude personally. this isn't your buddy or somebody that lives on your block. people are too quick to make heroes out of people they have limited access to. lance, pro-athletes, celebrities, musicians, even politicians... all we know of them is what we get on tv and twitter. stop looking up to these people. there's probably a ton of heroes in your immediate environment. get out there and get to know some of them. who knows? maybe it's your parents or a teacher or maybe it's that barista at starbucks who always makes your latte the right way. turn off the tv and get to know them.

or improve yourself. if you feel the need to invest your emotions into uber-athletes, maybe you're doing something wrong. maybe you need to go out and invest your emotions elsewhere. no touchdown scoring, home run hitting, mountain cycling athlete is ever gonna have an immediate, positive effect on your life. so give it up. stop focusing on that and focus on you.

and remember, sports is fodder. it's all so silly. taking sports seriously is for athletes and analysts. the rest of us need to chill out and remember this is just entertainment. don't get so involved in it.

do you know what is serious? cancer. what if every scoundrel in sports did what lance armstrong did outside of sports? what if they all started their very own organization to help fight cancer? imagine if every blood doping, pill popping, rule breaking athlete in the world decided to start their very own cancer fighting machine? and imagine if all those cancer fighting machines really started taking it to cancer and eventually winning the war. what then? i know this is some highly improbable shit i'm talking about. but at what point in the fight against cancer do we decide, eh fuck it, who cares if he blood doped? would we be any less grateful for a cure for cancer if we found out it came from someone who cheated in something as silly as sports?