Over the last two nights, Lance Armstrong has come clean about his extensive PED usage and blood doping as a professional cyclist. In doing so, he has virtually guaranteed himself the tittle of Biggest Scumbag In The History of Sport. Over the past decade, he has vigorously denied any wrongdoing and has gone so far as to defame and slander anyone who called him out on his lies. What’s more, he’s sued people over this, and that’s why he should go to jail.
By suing someone or some entity, in this case the USADA, for libel–all the while knowing that the people he was suing were telling the truth and he was the one lying–Armstrong has wasted countless hours of the lives of judges, lawyers, and court officers. He has placed more on the plate of an already overstressed legal system and done it at the expense of other, legitimate court cases. In the time the courts were listening to Armstrong’s self important BS, they could have been hearing wrongful death suits, injuries, and other actual injustices.
Now, I’m no lawyer–I don’t even have my Bachelors yet–but that sounds an awful lot like Obstruction of Justice to me. Armstrong obstructed the process of coming to just conclusions in a whole litany of real, actual, not based on the lies of a media hungry, over-competitive, roided up scumbag, cases.
If we want to invent things to charge Barry Bonds with in order to basically try him for taking steroids, we should at least have the decency to prosecute a steroid user who actually caused society harm.
The truth is, I didn’t really mind Armstrong until yesterday. I’m not a cycling fan but I thought it was cool that he won all those Tours in a row and did such good work with Livestrong. Granted, as he got deeper and deeper into his denials about the doping I became a little annoyed, but I honestly didn’t care enough about Armstrong to actually form a full opinion.
Now, after listening to him say exactly the opposite of what he’s been saying for years, confirming without a shadow of a doubt that not only is he a huge liar and cheater with no morals or ethics, but that the people whose lives he tried to destroy to help him maintain his charade were actually telling the complete and honest truth the whole entire time, makes me detest the man. I honestly can’t think of anything short of murder, assault, or rape, that is as heinous as what Armstrong has put the people who’ve (rightfully) accused him of doping through for absolutely no reason but to further his lies.
For that reason–for wasting the court’s valuable time and preventing true justice from being done, as well as ruining the lives of innocent people–Armstrong should be locked up in a facility with absolutely no exercise bikes.
-Max Frankel
