Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods And American Athlete Worship

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By G. Hylton / @realgoesright

So at some point earlier this week, Lance Armstrong was on television telling people he took PEDs when he was winning every single competition imaginable in cycling. From a cursory glance of Armstrong’s story, I learned when he was first accused of taking steroids, he took it upon himself to try and ruin the lives of the people who rallied against him. Almost a decade later, he decided to sit down and make the “typical white man” face while admitting to the world what I’m assuming people had already known.

Lance Armstrong, despite raising however millions of dollars in the name of cancer, is a lying, cheating piece of shit.

To this I say ... who cares?

Lance Armstrong rides bikes for a living. Through all of this bike riding, he was somehow able to garner enough popularity to lend his name to a worthwhile cause and raise money for a good cause that affected people all over the world. Call me crazy, but I’m not about to let something as simple as him cheating get in the way of all the good he’s done. You know why? Because Lance Armstrong is human and we humans are far from perfect.

You know, we should actually really consider what we, the American public, are saying by “demanding” a public apology from Lance Armstrong.

We’re saying America, home to some of the most self-righteous, indignant, idiotic and self-serving general public are owed an apology from a man who cheated while he was riding bikes and earning millions of dollars for cancer research.

Really, America? What I would like to know is, who the fuck are you to be demanding apologies from people? Huh?

I know you read that last statement and thought, “Goddamn man, why are you angry?” I don’t want you to think I’m angry. I’m amazingly calm and sipping on flavored water while writing this post. What I am, however, is perplexed at the hero worship Americans like to hoist onto athletes.

Athletes. Celebrities. Musicians. Whatever else. America has this super strange fascination with famous people and upholding them to deity-like standards to the point where these people have to apologize to America for simply being human. It’s absolutely nuts.

I was on Twitter a few weeks ago, and I saw this hashtag #CutsForBieber. A million and a half teenage white kids with no adult supervision and razor sharp objects were cutting themselves as a protest to get Justin Bieber (or as I like to call him “Ellen”) to stop smoking weed. I’m not an expert, but if I was Justin Bieber and I saw some shit like that, I’d probably keep rolling up. Matter of fact, I’m surprised Justin Bieber isn’t smoking crystal meth after being made aware (I’m only guessing with this) that people have actually done this in his name. That’s insane.

Of course, no public apology blog is going to be written without writing about Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods held a press conference to tell everybody he was sorry for cheating on his wife and going to a “sex clinic” in order to learn to ... hell, I don’t know what the hell his purpose was. I figured he said it to appease the people who wanted to know how he was going to show himself being repentant for his “sins” against humanity.

Look, Tiger, you’re an American citizen. If you want to cheat on your wife, that’s your right as an American citizen. The only person Tiger should have ever been explaining himself to is his wife. And hell, she tried to beat the shit out of him with a golf club, so clearly his explanation wasn’t good enough for her. Why did he think a press conference would be good enough for us?

There’s a certain segment of the population who feels that because they’ve had a hand in that person’s personal fortune, there’s some weird sort of relationship that’s been created. “I’ve personally invested in your success by either spending money on your products or paying money to see you, therefore, you owe it to me to be a role model for my children.”

Maybe I’m crazy, but in my opinion athletes don’t really amount to anything other than people who are really good at one thing and therefore, they decided to capitalize on their talent. I don’t understand why the general public ascribes to hold them to some sort of higher standard as if these people don’t have anything else better to do than to cater to our whims of what we think they should be like.

Bottom line, famous person, unless you actually owe a duty to the American public (you know ... like politicians) stop apologizing and explaining anything to the American people. Anybody who seems to be particularly preoccupied with the goings-on of famous people to the point where you feel that you’re owed an apology because they messed up?

Kill yourself.

Peace.

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