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If Only a Doping Scandal Could Mean Victory in Iraq

If you aren't following the Tour de France you’re not alone. Without Lance and those yellow bracelets there's little interest (even though an American sits in third place). So instead of following what is quite possibly the most difficult athletic endeavor known to man, Americans are instead fixated on baseball, on Barry Bonds, in his quest to do what only one man has ever done.

Both feats are mired in controversy, and by controversy I mean doping shitstorms. In two years, the Tour went from having an American seven-time, cancer-surviving, positive-drug-test free champion in Lance Armstrong to last year having “winner” Floyd Landis still disputed by his positive tests for elevated testosterone (the results of which he's opened up to a wiki-jury to vindicate himself), to this year's catastrophe.

Only four days from the finish of the three-week, 2,500 mile race, and just after the deciding day in the Pyrenees, race leader, Dane Michael Rasmussen, was booted today for mysteriously disappearing during testing days this spring. And earlier this week another favorite failed a drug test, which revealed he had had a blood transfusion before a stage he ended up winning.

And then there's Barry. A man who has hit 753 home runs—an astounding number. Three more and he'll eclipse Hank Aaron's record. Of course, Bonds has hit many of those while on performance-enhancing drugs, drugs that we are now seeing to be so prevalent that the pitchers he is facing may be as juiced up as he is.

Sports are awash with doping scandals. It ain't good for kids to watch Rasmussen sail up a grueling, 10-mile mountain road in the morning and find out he's a champion because of drugs in the afternoon. But let's be honest, drugs are a technological advance that feeds into the frenzy that is not only sports, but our entire culture.

Tiger Woods has laser eye surgery to improve his game. Actors have plastic surgery to extend their lucrative careers. We invent Teflon to keep our food from sticking to cookware. Cars that go faster, or that use less gas, do so because of science, the same science used to dope athletes.

We like advances that make life easier, better, more exciting. And we want to see winners, bikers chugging up mountains, men hitting baseballs unfathomable distances. After all, it distracts us from what we are losing, soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, hearts and minds everywhere. Win at all costs, isn't that the American Way?

Comments

Seven-time winner. Don't do yourselves down!

Posted by: john on 07/26/07 at 12:03 AM

Jesus, how obsessed can you get? What about the connection between Lindsay Lohan and Iraq or the Simpsons movie and Iraq or the new Harry Potter book? Get a life.

Posted by: Sam on 07/26/07 at 11:26 AM

I dunno, Sam, seems like the worse off the world is, the more we need our bread and circus souped-up to keep us sane.
I think there's a pretty obvious correlation between our acceptance of bigger, better, faster at any cost, and the escalation of worldwide calamity.

Posted by: GetReal on 07/26/07 at 12:37 PM

I’ve got to agree with Sam here Elizabeth. The war in Iraq IS just a side show. Nobody that matters to those THAT matter - which includes me and Lindsay (of course) - are getting hurt. Enjoy the war for what it is. The fascist party HERE is self-destructing over the war. The fascist peasants HERE are getting discouraged (meaning less likely to vote – and a few of their kids are getting killed, which is like another vote). The fascist peasants HERE aren’t bothering me or you socialists. And, AND, you socialists will win the next election and destroy the country is some OTHER way the fascists haven’t even imagined yet. Politics is wonderful.

Posted by: John on 07/26/07 at 12:43 PM

Hey John, go crawl back under your rock.
"Enjoy the war for what it is."
You calloused ignoramus; you're flipping delusional. Keep your crazy sociopathic ranting to yourself. Mmmmkay? Great.

Posted by: Beauford on 07/26/07 at 2:03 PM

I think John is being facetious, at least I hope so. And I'm not saying there is any direct correlation btw bike racing or home runs and war, just that the same instincts apply in sports as they do in war, as they do in life. And to Sam I'd say, don't you think we all need to get a little *more* obsessed with this war? If people studied casualties and battle statistics like they do box scores we just all might be laying down in the streets by now.

Posted by: Elizabeth on 07/26/07 at 2:19 PM

Oh, if only John were being facetious.
The dude is apparently views everything that happens in the world through the dichotomy of "fascists" (right-wingers) and "socialists" (you, presumably, since you're reading Mother Jones).
If you do a search for "fascists" and "socialists" on this site, you can find his zany/terrifying/pathological tirades here:
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/07/4891_ron_paul_darlin.html
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2006/10/2487_baker_commissio.html
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/07/4819_david_vitter_hu.html
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/07/4813_debating_the_su.html

Posted by: Beauford on 07/26/07 at 3:53 PM

Jezzz, Beauford! Not sure what area you are living in, but where I’m at the peasants aren’t AT war; unless you are talking about “those people”. This is suburban Republican country. These white peasants, btw, voted fascist TWICE! They voted fascist so that they (the white peasants) would “get even” with “those people” for what “they” are “doing to this great country”. I personally only know one peasant with a kid in the military. I think this is called - in Republican circles - “survival of the fittest”. The economy is booming, the credit-cards are filling, gas prices are going down, plenty of HD sports, … No war out here, dude.

I DO hear from the peasants that they are pissed at these ungrateful eyeRackEase, though. And despite EVERYTHING that we’ve done to “liberate them”, they are ungrateful – the bastards. I also hear about the liberal media not telling the “truth” about the “great accomplishments” made in eyeRack.

Perhaps you are in another country.

Posted by: JoHn on 07/26/07 at 3:56 PM