Is it just me, or is there a great big hole in the Lance Armstrong story? When do we start talking about him as the one of the world's biggest dope pushers? When does Lance Armstrong's name get tied to child drug addiction?
See also: Lance Armstrong Will Step Down as Chairman of Livestrong
Not right away. Today's New York Times quotes Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France, fretting about the millions of dollars Armstrong cheated to win. But then he calls him, "a true talent who strayed" and "played with fire."
No. Played with dope. It's dope. It's not fire. It's shit. That's what Armstrong and the rest of that stupid sport have taught the kids of the world. You can't go fast on your bike without shit in your veins. The longer this story runs, the more obvious it is that the entire sport is polluted. They should shut it down.
The fact that Lance Armstrong is a local boy only make the bite more bitter. An especially insipid story in The Dallas Morning News last Saturday said: "Despite the aftershocks of this month's report alleging long-term doping, Armstrong maintains an immensely loyal Texas base, including many people who have been with him since the beginning."
I can take you down to Dixon Circle right now and find people there who will defend their own dope dealers. What does that prove? I can find more people in the Dixon Circle neighborhood who hate dope dealers' guts. Why focus on the enablers?
Speaking of whom, we could talk about the prescription-mill shrinks who hand out psychoactive drugs like candy or the other physicians, too, who give first-time patients prescriptions for Oxycontin. They have a role here. They're dope dealers. Their stain spreads across the entire field of medicine.
At what cost? Ask a parent whose high school student can't muster the social confidence to face a party without snorting Adderall. Ask the E.R. doc who has to shoot up a newborn baby with Methadone because Mommy had a painkiller habit and a sleazy doctor to feed it. Ask them what Armstrong stands for.
He stands for cheating. He is the glamorous embodiment of cheating. The idea of Lance Armstrong is the idea of cheating. Nice guys finish third. Gold goes only to crooks.
Dope is a terribly fundamental kind of cheating -- the annihilation of the soul by cheating. The real plague is the idea symbolized by Armstrong that a child's soul isn't good enough. The child all alone, on his own and in and of himself, is born an also-ran. He can only become worthwhile with shit in his veins.
So that's easy. Most of the shit he needs is in his parent's medicine cabinet. In a study published in December, 2011, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a division of the National Institutes of Health, reported that the most common drug of choice among 12th graders, after weed and synthetic marijuana, was Vicodin. Right after that, Adderall.
Vicodin's easy. Dad has a ton of it left over from his tooth extraction. A kid can take some, sell some in the lunchroom. Adderall is sold illegally to kids in every school in the country, especially at the toney private ones where money is more plentiful.
Why? Why is it so easy morally -- almost a reflex -- for kids to juice themselves with some kind of shit in order to go through a day of high school? Where do they get the idea that dope is OK?
From Lance Armstrong. That's what he is. That's what he means. That's what he stands for.
Please don't mention the cancer charity again. What a travesty. You know what? Next time a celebrity comes out against cancer, I want somebody to do a story about celebrities who are in favor of cancer. It's like taking a stand against death. So fucking what?
I hate Lance Armstrong. Hate him. Hate what he stands for. Hate what he is. He is a vampire. How many of us have his mark on our necks?
