[Vision2020] The Point of Lance

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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January 16, 2013
The Point of Lance By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

Right now you’re probably asking yourself: What can the Lance Armstrong
scandal teach us as a nation?

It had better teach us something or we’ll have wasted one heck of a lot of
time talking about this guy. And the lesson should not involve the future
of cycling. Now that Lance Armstrong is disgraced, people, how many of you
ever plan to think about the sport of cycling again? Can I see a show of
hands? I thought so.

As the whole universe knows, Armstrong is a superfamous American athlete
who developed testicular cancer, went through arduous therapy and then
returned to the racing circuit as the head of the United States Postal
Service Pro Cycling Team, winning the Tour de France seven straight times.

And then the authorities stripped away his medals for serial doping. Which
Armstrong denied, virtually on an hourly basis, with a vengeance that made
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman” sound like a confession.

The denial stage is scheduled to come to an end Thursday in an Oprah
interview. After which we will discuss whether Armstrong can be forgiven.

We can certainly grant him absolution as a human being, but he appears to
be in the market for forgiveness as a celebrity. And, really, once you get
past the now-demolished race record, there’s not much point to Lance
Armstrong, Famous Person. He has no other talents. He isn’t particularly
lovable. He was once cited for using 330,000 gallons of water at his Texas
home in a month when his neighbors were being asked to conserve by cutting
back on their car-washing. He left his wife, got engaged to the singer
Sheryl Crow. He said he broke up with Sheryl Crow because of her
“biological clock.” The New York Post had him dating one of the Olsen
twins.

There’s always a chance. Armstrong could demonstrate his remorse by
dedicating the rest of his life to fighting rural poverty in an extremely
remote section of Africa, preferably one where residents are limited to a
quart of water a day. His fans would come flocking back, although Armstrong
would hardly notice because the critical part of the deal would be staying
in Niger or Burkina Faso forever.

Meanwhile, his foundation could pick a new spokesperson from the ranks of
American cancer survivors who went back to work without violating the
cardinal moral principle of their profession.

But we still need to wring a useful lesson out of all this. Let’s consider
the U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team. Between 1996 and 2004, our
American mail system invested an estimated $40 million in this venture, in
return for which Armstrong and his teammates rode around with the Postal
Service insignia on their shirts.

This would be the same Postal Service that lost $16 billion last year, and
I believe I speak for every stamp-buyer in the nation when I say: What?

“It really is a strong morale-building element,” the general manager of the
team said in 2001, when asked what the mailing public was getting out of
all this. There are, the manager added, a lot of people who “feel a little
bit better about the Postal Service because of its association with Lance.”

Then it would follow that the American public feels worse about the Postal
Service now that Armstrong is headed for Pariah Junction. But, personally,
I’m more focused on that $16 billion.

The Armstrong heyday was back in the era when the Postal Service, having
been spun off into a quasi-private enterprise, was having delusions of
corporate grandeur. The era when it lost $8.3 million in a failed attempt
to start a retail operation in the Mall of America. Its leaders liked the
idea that “they could rub shoulders with other C.E.O.’s who were sponsoring
sports activities,” said Ruth Goldway, the chairwoman of the Postal
Regulatory Commission.

Goldway was never a big fan of the postal service cycle team, although she
felt it was a better marketing tool than some of the other ideas put into
play, like “buying free tickets for postal employees to go to football
games.” And, she said, she had some sympathy for Armstrong, “until I saw
how he treated Sheryl Crow.”

There still are sponsorship deals floating all around the federal
government. (The Army has one with the National Hot Rod Association.)
Nobody seems to keep track of exactly how much they add up to. Maybe this
one little area could be a staging ground for bipartisan accord.
Republicans and Democrats could join together to ban the use of federal
taxpayer dollars for sponsorship of sports events. Then they would be so
pleased with their progress that they could move on and pass a genuine
budget. The Lance Armstrong debacle would have a point!

Although, actually, Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota proposed
banning the use of taxpayer money to sponsor Nascar race teams in 2011, and
she was voted down, 281 to 148.

We’ll look for another moral. Maybe something about Sheryl Crow.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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