The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Pretty Little Liars

    By Michael Wolraich on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 3:00pm | Politics

    I wanted to believe Lance Armstrong, even after he wrote, "Enough is enough."

    I thought it was strange that he declined to contest the allegations of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, but I couldn't help empathizing with this man, so confident and earnest, a sports legend and a survivor.

    I was not totally credulous. I knew that he might guilty of doping. But I remained agnostic.

    On Wednesday, the USADA laid out its case against Lance Armstrong. He is guilty of doping. He doped continuously, aggressively, defiantly. He pressured his teammates to dope. He was the doper-in-chief of the US Postal team.

    And all the while he was doping, he was lying. Year after year of bald denials as he demonized everyone who told the truth. He is still lying today.

    What shocks me, looking back, is that it took me so long to see it. Many of the USADA's allegations are not new. Armstrong's teammates have been accusing him of doping for years. I just didn't really pay attention, didn't want to pay attention.

    Because Lance Armstrong is a very good liar.

    We normally think of a good liar as someone who can tell bold lies with a straight face and without inconsistency--a con-artist. But the real art to lying extends far beyond the lie itself. A good liar injects his whole life into the lie. He invents himself as a person of tremendous integrity, a lonely hero surrounded by malicious deceivers. That was Lance Armstrong.

    Mitt Romney is not a good liar. Like most successful politicians, he can pull off lies with a straight face and does so frequently, but he will never master the art for the simple reason that he looks like a liar.

    If Romney had been an actor, he would have been typecast as the slick villain whose sterling reputation masks a secret life as a gangster, werewolf, or malicious space alien. He would be the creepy All-American hero everyone trusts except the protagonists and the entire audience.

    Appearances aren't everything, of course, but Romney has doubled-down on his lying eyes by building a reputation for Machiavellian plasticity. He has never bothered to invent himself as a truth-talker or a man of integrity. Instead, he has enthusiastically embraced whichever platform seemed most expedient at the time. Consequently, people tend to assume that he will say whatever he has to say to get elected.

    It would have been simple for President Obama to nail him in last week's debate if he had tried. Romney launched several missiles at Obama's integrity: the "I have five boys" and "you're entitled to your own airplane" zingers. They missed the target because Obama lies skillfully and infrequently. People tend to trust him. Romney would have been far more vulnerable to such attacks because people do not tend to trust him. He looks like and acts like a liar.

    Paul Ryan, by contrast, is a very good liar. His boyish earnestness evinces a goodie-two-shoes whiz kid. If he starred in a cycling movie, he would be Dave from "Breaking Away," the boy-wonder whose illusions are dashed when the Italian riders he admires turn out to be cheats. That movie was filmed in more innocent times, but it goes without saying that Ryan-as-cyclist would never, ever, ever dope.

    Ryan has capitalized on his honest looks by inventing a reputation for integrity. He hews to a strict conservative script to demonstrate his "principles" and wows the media with "courageous" endorsements of unpopular proposals.

    As a result, the many documented exceptions, such as his vote to expand Medicare, his request for stimulus funds, and other irregularities soon disappear into the forgetful mist like Lance Armstrong's accusers. Ryan's outrageous lies, like running a marathon in under three hours, raise eyebrows and then fade away.

    Had Joe Biden faced Mitt Romney instead of Paul Ryan last night, his withering attacks would have savaged his opponent. Romney has no way to pay for his many promises, and his evasions would have made him look like a con-man exposed in the middle of his game. But Paul Ryan was able to deliver the same evasions with the earnest conviction of a man who knows how to lie well, and the media applauded him for standing up to Biden and looking so very presidential.

    Mitt Romney is unlikely to win the election. If he does, he will probably become the least popular president since Richard Nixon, the last bad liar to grace the White House.

    But watch out for Paul Ryan. He is a very pretty little liar.

    Michael Wolraich is the author of Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual

    Topics: 
    Politics

    Comments

    Pretty little liar for sure!

    For a number of reasons that I do not feel like enumerating here, Biden would have destroyed Romney.

    Romney gets mad!

    Not like regular folks.

    Romney begins to stutter and his voice rises and he lets loose with some idiotic $10,000 bet or some such.

    Anyway,

    Lance was dying of cancer.

    Now was the cancer anyway linked to the drugs?

    I watch House, but I aint no doc.

    I have smoked for 50 years but I do not have cancer. As of yet anyway.

    And steroids and many other chemical combinations are used to treat cancer and as far as I know, Lance survives!

    Lance has gone through hell.

    And back...

    I recall the years going through baseball with Sosa and the other guy hitting more home runs in a year than Ruth & Gehrig combined. hahahaha

    And Sosa aint gettin into the Hall of Fame but he sure as hell is a millionaire. Even with all the wondrous things he has done in Haiti.

    Lance has almost lost his life and now loses every goddamn trophy he has ever 'earned'.

    I will ask you this.

    Biden is supposedly a gaffe producer; I assume this is like something left in the air on a dairy farm.

    And the 'liberal media' guffaws and laughs and sneers and....

    But Mitt and Ryan lie every frickin day and they always produce the BIG LIE.

    And the 'fact checkers' find misstatements in the comments made by both the repubs and the dems.

    So Washpo and politico and the rest of MSM find out that the Obama Administration was off by 5 billion in some pronouncement whilst Mitt and his lying friend are off by 5 trillion.

    See, MSM has no idea how to really treat REAL liars.

    Remember how MSM treated Gore? Oh he said he invented the internet and he sighed.

    And w bush had absolutely NO qualifications for the presidency and he went on to promise no war and compassion and....WTF?

    Well that was all fine and good and then it turns out that Cheney and Wolfowitz and Feith and a number of other neocons get us into HELL and by 2004, just a couple years after we found ourselves in HELL sides with w bush over a Vet.

    Sorry, that is enough.

     


    by Richard Day on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 3:32pm

    You have to, on some level, believe your lies.  As best I can tell, Mitt Romney only believes that he deserves to be president and that he'd be good at it.  Anything else is just a means to getting there.

    Armstrong believes what comes out of his own mouth.  I'm not saying that he doesn't remember using supplements to increase his red blood cell count.  But I do know that a lot of blood dopers don't think that there's anything wrong with doing it.  They believe the rules banning it are the problem.  They ask, somewhat reasonably, why strength building supplements like creatine and ZMA are fine while HGH and EPO are not.  One of things in the Armstrong report is that he used topical cortizone.  This would alleviate some joint pain on a long ride.  But is it similarly illegal to take aspirin?  I'm not defending the guy, just playing with his potential rationalizations.

    I don't think Romney's there.  At this point, he's got to be wondering what the heck he believes, if anything at all.


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 3:35pm

    I hereby render unto Michael the Dayly Line of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of him from all of me for this gem:

    As best I can tell, Mitt Romney only believes that he deserves to be president and that he'd be good at it.  Anything else is just a means to getting there.

    I got no disagreement with this! ha

     

     


    by Richard Day on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 4:05pm

    My first Dayly Line of The Day Award under my parent-given name!  I'm honored, RD.


    by Michael Maiello on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 4:08pm

    There are certainly liars who believe their own lies, but I don't think it's possible that Armstrong is one of those. He didn't say that EPO and testosterone should be allowed. He said that he didn't do them, over and over for years while he was actually using them. The sheer volume of evidence about what he did makes it inconceivable that he believed his own denials.

    To turn your example around, Armstrong did not just use topical cortizone. When he tested positive for oral cortizone, he had his doctor backdate a prescription for topical cortizone, which he pretended that he had needed for saddle sores. That was a lie, and Armstrong knew it was a lie.


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 4:10pm

    Leaving Mitt aside for the moment...I agree with you 100%...and with Destor's jewel of an observation...

    But other piece of the Armstrong lie is that, I'd wager, virtually everyone in the race dopes. Everyone who is anywhere close to the front.

    So he can justify it by saying that doping is the only way he could stay up with his main competitors because they are ALSO doping.

    The focus wasn't on them because they weren't winning like Lance even with the doping. So the lie was simply an extension of the "necessary" cheating, not something in addition to.

    Either everyone gets to dope or no one gets to dope. And if everyone who's anyone is doping, then you dope, too...IF you want to win.


    by Anonymous Peter... (not verified) on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 5:35pm

    Excellent point. I'm sure it's right. And I'm sure that's how most politicians rationalize it too.


    by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 5:44pm

    Think of the "say it ain't so, Joe," of Black Sox fame.

    We take it harder when our sports heroes lie than when politicians or business folk lie.

    I note with some interest Dan's earnest outrage over this ("what is the world coming to????") as if, at least since Nixon and really long before that, we hadn't been subjected to long strings of horrible liars whose lies have had a much bigger impact on the world than Lance's.

    Think Iraq, for example...

    But when Lance lies..."why, in MY day, a man who lied the way Lance or these others lied woulda slit their own throats, swallowed poison, thrown themselves in front of an oncoming train, or taken a boat out into the Atlantic and lit three sticks of dynamite just to make sure that no one would ever see them again or otherwise be forced to handle their remains..."

    What is the world coming to...


    by Anonymous Peter... (not verified) on Sat, 10/13/2012 - 6:03pm

    I think people do lie more these days than they used to, and that we live in a culture of cynicism and falsity.  I'm not the only who has been saying this.  Others have been complaining about the ease with which Romney and Ryan are permitted to lie and get away with it by the media.  I would say that's because the media are themselves members of a mercenary corporate culture in which lying is seen as routine, and no big deal.


    by Dan Kervick on Sat, 10/13/2012 - 6:12pm

    Did anyone notice that the "6 studies' Ryan attested to on the Romney Ryan tax plan, were mostly blog posts and Op-Eds? A blog is a 'study'? Only in the delusional world of Republicans.

    Atlantic:

    In other words, Romney's plan only works if you assume he has a different plan or use a magic growth asterisk. And that means we have no idea what he would do if he wins. Does he care more about his tax rate cuts, about not hiking taxes on the middle class, or not increasing the deficit? His adviser Kevin Hassett suggested they would back off the high-end tax rate cuts if it would increase the deficit, but Romney quickly denied that. He's also denied reality, by relying on studies that only prove his critics' point.
     
    The only thing for sure with the R/R plan, is that the rich will get richer!

    by NCD on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 7:42pm

    You know what Mike, I was disappointed too. I want to be able to say, so what who cares, but damn it, Lance Armstrong cheated.  And then he lied about it. And while it means nothing in the this life, I still feel kind of let down by it, because I wanted him to be clean, I wanted him to have won without performance enhancing drugs.

    When I am riding it is the most amazing feeling. I can't do nothing but smile. The feel of sweat on my head, the wind in my face,  at my back, the curve of the pavement, the rush of road, the trees lining the park, the sound of those motorcycles passing me carefully, the cars whirring by, it is when you are one with the earth, with life.  It's just like having kids. It's a weird and amazing feeling.

    He kind of threw it all away, he can't compete, he can't do what he loves anymore, not professionally, and now we all know. He's done. He's ruined himself. God damn it, I am frustrated because I believed him.  But the win was more important than just loving the sport, the ride, the game, win or lose. That's too bad.

    FYI: Paul Ryan is lying about his 6% body fat too. That's just not believable to any real athlete over 40. I have to keep a 15% body fat, it isn't healthy, and I still compete when I can. He is a liar, but I already don't like the guy, and compared to what I thought about Mr. Armstrong he is pretty meaningless.


    by tmccarthy0 on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 9:49pm

    There is something really bad going on here.  Consider also the panel of baseball players that was invited to Congress a few years ago to testify on steroids.  They all sat there, looked earnestly into the face of the public's representatives - and lied brazenly!

    Don't men have any honor any more?  Honestly, this is the kind of thing that once upon a time would have resulted in people slitting their wrists in a bathtub from shame.  When these kinds of things happen so ubiquitously and frequently, it seems to me that we are experiencing a massive failure of the social bonds of conscience that unite people into a society, and that create an order in which the exchange of truth is expected, demanded and valued.


    by Dan Kervick on Fri, 10/12/2012 - 9:56pm

    Uh, if telling the truth means huge jail time, people will lie, "honor" or not. And the irony of whether it's dishonorable to lie in front of a bunch of lying Congresspeople who should be holding hearings over trillion dollar insider bank bailouts and illegal mortgage foreclosures, not getting involved in sports?

    While I understand sports is big business, Congress' involvement in this is a disgrace.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 1:23am

    I don't agree.  Steroid use was and is a major problem.  As its use became widespread, it created a situation in which other competitors had to choose between taking serious long term risks with their health or not being able to compete in their chosen profession.  The fact that people called to testify are guilty doesn't excuse their lying to Congress.  They could always plead the fifth.  All those guys McGuire, Palmiero, etc. are lying scum with no honor.


    by Dan Kervick on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 1:47am

    It's a major problem to who? Not me - I don't give a damn. Congress has 1000 more important tasks as far as I can tell - Congress can toss a couple more million to DoJ for steroids enforcement and move on to other issues. But instead I think they like rubbing elbows with sport stars, "tainted" or otherwise.

    And if it's illegal to lie to Congress, then enforce the law when bankers and the CIA and FBI  or VP come in and lie to Congress. Selective outrage is a great way to dampen outrage.


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 9:33am

    You guys just need a more reliable connect. Enhanced performance is a good thing.

    by jollyroger on Sat, 10/13/2012 - 12:32pm

    More admirable behavior from the great athlete:

    Ms. O’Reilly first went public in 2003, when she was paid to cooperate on a book, “L.A. Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong,” that sought to expose Mr. Armstrong as a drug cheat. Mr. Armstrong sued her for libel.

    Ms. O’Reilly said Mr. Armstrong demonized her as a prostitute with a drinking problem, and had her hauled into court in England. Ultimately, a legal settlement was reached, and Ms. O’Reilly tried to pick up her life, sometimes talking about Mr. Armstrong and drugs, but to little notice.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/sports/cycling/lance-armstrong-aide-ta...

    The doping case unveiled by Usada is unlikely to renew an earlier criminal investigation of Armstrong related to doping. In that case, federal prosecutors examined allegations of his doping and doping-related crimes, including defrauding the government, drug trafficking, money laundering and conspiracy. In particular, investigators from the Food and Drug Administration, the F.B.I. and the United States Postal Service, which sponsored Armstrong’s team for several years, looked into whether he and his associates used government money to finance doping.

    The antidoping agency said it found Armstrong committed perjury during the SCA hearings by making false statements about his doping activities. At the time, Armstrong attacked SCA and its founder, Bob Hamman, as well as witnesses, including some members of the cycling community, who testified for the company.

    On Friday, Jeffrey M. Tillotson, a lawyer in Dallas who represents SCA, said his client would attempt to regain the $7.5 million plus interest. “He basically said that we were scum and how dare we criticize him,” Tillotson said. “So there is some measure of relief that we can now say that he didn’t get away with it forever and, by the way, ‘You owe us $7.5 million.’ ”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/sports/cycling/usadas-report-could-cre...

     


    by Michael Wolraich on Sun, 10/14/2012 - 1:11pm

    I've really never understood attitudes about drugs in sports (actually, make that attitudes about drugs in general).  Most of the lines are arbitrary and can't be made sense of in context.  For example, you're not supposed to be using steroids because they have potentially harmful side effects, but you can go out on a football field and have your skull repeatedly bashed for the better part of an afternoon.  Sports like cycling might not have the same kind of risks, but four participants have died in the Tour since its inception.

    Needless to say, there are inherent risks in cycling and every sport.  We tirelessly demand not just peak performance, but peak performance in excess of previous records.  We demand not that human beings find the limits of their athletic potential, but that they blow by it.  Now there are enhancements like HGH available that have incredibly low risk of side effects and can safely be used to maximize genetically limited factors like lean muscle mass.  Yet, for some reason, we want to frown and scold when athletes do what it takes to break athletic boundaries.

    I guess just hope I never have to see another asshat in Congress grilling a baseball player.  IMHO, it makes us look like a bunch of morons.  Speaking of asshats in Congress, it still sucks when they lie.  It's even worse when everyone in media applauds it.


    by DF on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 12:47pm

    I don't get it.  Baseball is an industry like any other, and it receives a substantial amount of legislative protection.  Why shouldn't it get grilled when there is suspicion that there is widespread law-breaking going on?

    Personally, I enjoy seeing the reputations of phony jock-hypocrites challenged publicly.


    by Dan Kervick on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 1:08pm

    Read the long drawn-out Roger Clemens case - how much in taxpayer money and Congress' time was spent in showing prosecuter malfeasance and finallly his acquittal? In this case, it was the reputations of George Mitchell, Henry Waxman, Michael Mukasey that were destroyed over a period of 4 1/2 years. 


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 1:52pm

    Why shouldn't they?  Because it's costly and pointless.  Regardless of how personally satisfying you find it, can you point to a productive purpose it's served?  Not to mention that the fans didn't seem to mind.  MLB couldn't even get butts in seats until the steroid-fueled home run revolution took off.

    It's non-scandal scandal, perfect for Senators grand-standing, but it does nothing for the average American.  It amounts to fiddling while Rome burns.  I would think you would regard it for the distraction that it is.  Hell, sport itself is a distraction.  It's the last thing that our lawmakers need to be concerning themselves with.  "It's a business" just isn't a good enough reason for it to take that much priority.


    by DF on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 4:41pm

    I'm basically with you on this, DF.  Except that a woman running for Senate in Connecticut basically paid her way on the backs of contractors who she and her husband worked so hard, and expected so much from, that there's been an epidemic of deaths, some related to steroidal heart failure but most related to the painkillers you become addicted to when your muscles get so large they tear from the bone when you do a simple lunge...


    by Michael Maiello on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 5:24pm

    These are extremely prominent and very highly paid people whom other people look up to and model themselves on, like it or not.  When they are permitted to lie and cheat and abuse dangerous illegal drugs in the open, all while sucking up a massive amount of our economic resources, and then lie to the people's representatives about it, the spectacle of privileged unaccountability undermines institutions and fosters further public corruption.  Of course I suppose its no different than the massive, unprosecuted wave of Wall Street criminality that swept the nation this decade and crashed our economy, and that our weak and incompetent President and his crooked attorney general have allowed to go unpunished as well.


    by Dan Kervick on Tue, 10/16/2012 - 1:10am

    Yeah, I remember when Miley Cyrus tweeted nude pics and cut her hair, while Lindsay Lohan went into rehab - undermined the fabric of our nation.

    Hope they get them into Congress soon - a good grilling, and then maybe a songfest is what we need.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 10/16/2012 - 2:20am

    I guess the other thing is...it was an open "secret" among serious cyclists.

    They've raced and know what it takes to do what Lance did--he had to be doping.

    Then again, in doper v dopers...Lance won...they didn't all win...so his feat qua feat still stands in objective terms.


    by Anonymous Peter... (not verified) on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 1:00pm

    This is the reality.  It's like when people try to take away from Schwarzenegger's wins because he used steroids.  Many bodybuilders were experimenting with them back then.  He was still just better than his competitors year after year.  It wasn't even close, but it wasn't just because he was using.  Drugs don't pedal bicycles or lift weights on their own.

    There seems to be a lot of pearl clutching about what should be obvious: in a world where the use of performance-enhancing drugs is prevalent, a champion turned out to be among the users.


    by DF on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 4:47pm

    From first hand experience . . .

    Back in the mid 20th Century (I'm old) for 6 years I competed at the highest levels of national and international track and field as a Triple-Jumper. For three years I competed as a member of the US Military Council of International Sports Military (CISM) track and field team while serving in the US Navy. My greatest achievement was jumping 53ft-11in. At the time the world record was 56ft-5in held by Joseph Schmidt of Poland.

    I was told by a very well-known trainer of the time that there was but one way to increase my jumps and that was through the use of anabolic steroids. At that time I was 21 years old, 6-2 and weighed 172 pounds. By using, and in addition to a well-planned diet coupled with the weight-lifting regimen that I was doing at the time my body muscle-mass would have increased by 10 to 12 percent. My body weight would have increased to between 190 to 200 pounds within a three-month period of time.

    There was testing at that time but it was very rudimentary. Although, being "a purest" that I have always tried to maintain I truly saw all of this as outright cheating. Couple that with my knowledge of others who had used and the physical problems that they had endured, there was no way I would take the chance of doing irreparable harm to my physical well-being.

    Since those days I have coached many young athletes. My advice to them has always been, your competition is with and within yourself (personal best and all), if you can't do it clean...

    DON'T DO IT!

    ~OGD~

    Michael... Thanks for this fine post and allowing the space for me to reminisce.


    by oldenGoldenDecoy on Mon, 10/15/2012 - 4:09pm

    Holy shit, OGD! Between you and Tmac, it's like, "visit dagblog, home of elite athletes..."

    by jollyroger on Tue, 10/16/2012 - 2:11am

    Which puts me in mind of the (totally irrelevant) blurb I did for the San Francisco Tourist Board:"Visit San Francisco! Steep hills, short skirts, steady winds". They passed on it...

    by jollyroger on Tue, 10/16/2012 - 2:22am