The Armstrong Lie
Crit
Reminds me of Mary McCarthy's famous remark about Lillian Hellman that "everything she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Documentarian Alex Gibney started making a film about the 2009 comeback by the titular seven-time Tour de France apparent winner (all his victories have been vacated) who became perhaps even better known as a cancer survivor and anticancer crusader. When the PEDs and blood-doping hit the fan, Gibney suspended filming, only to come back to interview Armstrong after he admitted his sins to America's mother confessor, Oprah. But even when telling many unattractive truths, Armstrong seems unable to let go of some of the lies.I never cared much, but I resent his betrayal on behalf of my older but more naïve brother--a cancer survivor himself--who kept faith with Armstrong as long as it was humanly possible. My takeaway from this is that in an enterprise where everyone cheats, the question is who cheats best. "Everybody" seems at worst a slight exaggeration for the years when Armstrong was collecting yellow jerseys, and while there will never be any way to know for certain, it seems a good bet that if all those races had been absolutely clean across the field, Armstrong still would have won, though it would have taken him a lot longer to do it.
It also occurred to me that the "who cheats best" principle applies to another fiercely contested athletic competition: American politics.
Trailers
- The Invisible Woman--Ralph Fiennes as Dickens (who is perhaps the leading contender for my Mitchell exemption in 2014), Felicity Jones as the love of his life, not to be confused with his wife.
- Le passé (The past)--Directed by Asghar Farhadi (A Separation), stars Bérénice Bejo (The Artist).
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