Friday column: A question of belief

Ah, Harold …

Here I was, exhaling a ginormous sigh of relief that the world didn’t go boom May 21 as you predicted, when you go and move the goal posts.

Now, I have to wait in terror five more months to Oct. 21?

Not fair, Harold.

Still, I think I’ll manage.

Somehow.

I’d give Harold credit for being light on his feet, but it’s rather a job requirement for a false prophet. In honor of Camping’s latest fizzle — he first predicted the End of it All in 1994 — The Christian Science Monitor ran a look back at some other apocalyptic busts.

My favorite was the 1954 prediction by a Chicago housewife and Dianetics follower involving aliens from the planet Clarion. Some of her followers, like Camping’s, quit jobs and sold possessions, then gathered at her house to await The Big Event.

When the appointed time came and went, her followers became increasingly agitated, whereupon the housewife announced she’d heard from the Clarions once again: God was so impressed by her group’s faithfulness, he had decided to spare Earth, after all!

Now, that’s being light-footed.

Lance Armstrong and his lawyers are not nearly as nimble on their toes. Perhaps they can’t be. Or perhaps they don’t have to be. It’s hard to tell.

To former associates’ accusations of the use of banned substances comes Armstrong’s mantra: “Never failed a drug test.” To former teammates’ allegations of cheating comes his lawyers’ mantra: “Liars out to sell a book.”

Armstrong doesn’t claim to be a prophet, but he does have followers, believers who have a stake in his story and his veracity.

Many of those have cancer, or have loved ones with cancer, and want very much to believe that the founder of the Livestrong Foundation won all those Tours de France riding clean.

One of them is Jennifer Floyd Engel, who writes for the Star-Telegram in Fort Worth, Texas. Her mother died of a hereditary form of cancer, a fact that, she says, “skyrockets my odds into an ugly place.”

Engel wrote this week about the importance of Armstrong’s Tour de France victories:

“The yellow jersey provided inspiration for everybody fighting cancer and everybody who may one day lock horns with this insidious disease. This was proof that doctors are not always right, that not everybody they say is going to die does and those who do win can come back stronger and better.”

Engel is shaken by the latest allegations but is hanging on to her belief in Armstrong’s innocence.

So is a friend of mine, who can marshal an impressive array of facts to support the view of Armstrong and his lawyers.

I would not dispute a single sentence of his litany; he knows the material much better than I.

And perhaps he is right; I would like him to be so.

And yet.

When there’s this much smoke, usually there is fire — somewhere.

It’s difficult for me to believe that all who have accused Armstrong have done so from ulterior motives, and even if they have, it doesn’t mean their charges don’t carry some truth (see Canseco, Jose).

It’s hard for me to believe that Armstrong — as fierce and driven a competitor as I’ve ever seen — would not avail himself of the same “edge” as did many of his competitors (and many of his teammates). Not if it meant victory instead of defeat.

Do I know he cheated? No, I don’t.

And I don’t know the world isn’t going to end Oct. 21.

But I’m not quitting my job.

A little something, surely

So.

The New York Times is reporting that federal prosecutors “have intensified their criminal investigation of the cyclist Lance Armstrong since the end of the Tour de France last month.”

Among those said to have been questioned is a former teammate who reportedly has corroborated Floyd Landis’ story that Armstrong doped.

Can we have a comment from Bryan D. Daly, Armstrong’s newly hired criminal defense attorney?

“To the extent that there’s anyone besides Floyd Landis saying things, the bottom line is, if you take away the soap opera and look at the scientific evidence, there is nothing.”

Actually, councilor, sworn testimony is not nothing. It may or not be accurate — and you may get a chance to cross-examine whoever gave it — but it is not nothing.

It is not nothing.

Friday column: Bad things happen in the gap between tale and truth

A gap lies between authentic and inauthentic — between what a person purports to be and what a person is — and that gap is a bad place to be.

Ask Mark Sanford.

Or Eliot Spitzer.

Or John Edwards.

No, those we find in such gaps aren’t always politicians. We also find athletes there — Hello, David Ortiz — and teachers and clergy and journalists and … well, you get the point.

In fact, I’m not sure it’s possible in this life for any person and persona to be 100 percent aligned. But when it comes to authenticity gaps, there are rifts and then there are chasms.

Lance Armstrong saying he was “really happy, perfectly happy” to serve as a support rider for Alberto Contador at this year’s Tour de France — when he clearly hates the Spaniard’s guts — that’s a rift in authenticity.

A 24-year-old woman claiming to be a teenage cancer victim in need of funds for a life-saving operation in a scam that fools Armstrong — a hero to many cancer patients — that’s a chasm.

“Jonathan Jay White” was supposedly a 15-year-old from Idaho with brain cancer. On a blog, “Jonathan” said he wanted to become a doctor and perform “medical miracles.” But first he needed a miracle himself, an operation he didn’t have the money for. People stepped up to help.

Except there was no Jonathan, no cancer. There was Melissa Ann Rice from Ammon, Idaho, and into the crevasse she created a number of people tumbled, including Armstrong and several other celebrities with good hearts.

The chasm also claimed cancer charities and regular folk who sent in donations. Other victims include the thousands of people who followed the boy’s story on his blog.

Also victimized, of course, is anyone truly needing help who might not get it now because people will wonder, “How do I know this story isn’t a scam?”

Large gaps in authenticity are pernicious. As in earthquakes, damage fans out in every direction. But damage is also significant at the epicenter. Such gaps are openings for evil, whether one thinks of such evil in theological or psychological terms.

The week “Jonathan” was supposed to arrive in Arizona for surgery — after receiving an encouraging Twitter message from Armstrong — Rice contacted the charities and confessed fraud. Days later Melissa Ann Rice was found dead in her car, an apparent suicide.

The last line in a report about her death read, “Neighbors in her apartment complex … said they didn’t know her.”

I’m quite certain they didn’t. My guess is that a person creating that large of a divide between tale and truth isn’t known even to herself.


Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.

That's showing him, Pierre

So.

The French surprised Lance Armstrong with a test, and no, it wasn’t “who’s buried in Napoleon’s Tomb?”

It was a doping test — just a little hello from the French to the American they love to hate, or at least love to suspect.

Armstrong was approached for a hair sample Tuesday in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where he is training, and the French weren’t exactly gentle about it. According to reports, an “anti-doping inspector armed with a pair of scissors this week took six clumps of the former Tour de France champion's hair that now will be tested for signs of drug use. Armstrong says his hair was so ‘butchered’ by the test that he had to get a buzz-cut to hide the mess.”

Boasted Pierre Bordry, chief of the French anti-doping agency, "He needs to know that he is like everyone else. To have done this test … was a good way to make him realize that he is like everyone else."

I hate to break it to you, Pierre, but he isn’t like everyone else. Everyone else hasn’t won the Tour de France seven straight times. Let's see ... that’s your race, isn’t it, Pierre?

Testing our credulity

So.

Lance Armstrong in his comeback to cycling will not be subject to an independent drug-testing program, after all.

Anti-doping expert Don Catlin, who was to test Armstrong and post the results online, told The Associated Press that “after months of negotiations, both sides realized the program wasn't workable this year.”

Armstrong, long the subject of drug rumors despite never testing positive, still will be subject to testing by UCI, cycling's international body, and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

In November, Armstrong got upset at an AP report that said the drug-test Web site he promised when he announced his return was nonexistent.

"It's a tough thing to organize,” he said at the time, “but we'll make it happen.”

I guess not.

Two things:

1) Before he made such a grandiose promise — which was done simply to boost his credibility as a clean athlete — he and Catlin should have nailed down the details.

2) I’m thinking that Greg LeMond and others who’ve suspected Armstrong of cheating will not express surprise that the extra scrutiny won’t actually be happening.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/cycling/news/story?id=3900247