It’s hard to tell who gets the most out of Lance Armstrong’s true confessions – the disgraced former Tour de France champion or the one-time champ of daytime TV, Oprah Winfrey. To say that the two seem to be made for each other is like saying bicycles have tires.
Just review the run-up to the already celebrated interview that hasn’t even aired yet. First, its leaked to the New York Times days ago that Armstrong is going to come clean – pardon the pun – after years of denying what everyone knows, that he is a serial (cyclical?) cheater. That scoop is followed immediately by vehement denials by unnamed sources “close to Armstrong.” The plot thickens.
Finally, Winfrey – her struggling cable channel looking about as successful as Al Gore’s did before Al Jazerra came calling – says she’ll sit down with Lance for the big interview. The content, we now learn, is so compelling that Oprah has decided it needs to be spread across two – count ’em – two nights of TV. But, before the klieg lights could cool word leaks that, yes, Lance has confessed. How could he not confess – tearfully, perhaps – sitting on the American family sofa in Oprah’s living room?
Then the interviewer, the most accomplished sports interlocutor since, say Brent Musburger – hold on – speaks on CBS This Morning! Yes, Lance did confess! Film on Thursday. Stay tuned.
Was he contrite? Well, Oprah says, I’ll leave that to the viewers. And, by the way, he really, really surprised me with the way he handled the interview. And, did I mention, its so darn good “my team” decided we needed to spread out of the goodness over two nights.
One of the best lines on all this comes from Dave Zirin writing in The Nation: “(Armstrong) is attempting to use the forgiving, New Age, healing glow of Oprah to please multiple masters with a mix of candor, charm, and puppy dog sympathy. There is a slight flaw however in this plan, which would challenge the smoothest of operators: that’s the stubborn fact that Lance Armstrong is also a person who makes Rahm Emanuel look like Tickle Me Elmo.”
In one respect, Armstrong and his lawyers are engaged in a brilliant piece of damage and mind control. In the age of Twitter, by the time the damn interview airs this week Lance’s confession will be like yesterday’s garbage – take it to the curb, we’re done with it.
This is, of course, what the cycling cheater had in mind all along. No sense confronting the people Armstrong has defamed or the real reporters he has mislead while repeatedly, vehemently and righteously putting himself above his sport and anything approaching a shred of sportsmanship, not to say honor.
In the curious world in which we live some cheaters – Pete Rose and Barry Bonds come to mind – are consigned to the dust bin where failed heroes go to sulk. Others, if they have the moxie, are given a second or third act. Lance Armstrong is using his Oprah moment in just as cold and calculating a manner as when he engaged in one of the greatest sports cheating scandals of all time.
Stay tuned, after the confession comes the phase where Lance will turn state’s evidence and in the blinding white light of rehabilitation cast himself not as the guy who forever tainted an entire sport, but as the guy who now comes to clean it up.
Oprah should know, it’s tough to be contrite when you’re calculating. Tickle Me Elmo is giggling somewhere.