"Pistof" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:
[email protected]...
> "B. Lafferty" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> >
> > We'll just have to read the book. It does raise questions as to the
> > patient/doctor privelege and what it covers in this instance. .
>
> yeah, and I'll also waste my money on a Globe the next time I'm waiting to
> pay for my groceries.
>
> Dave
Read what O'Grady has to say about your position:
Friday's foaming rant: Shooting the messenger
By Patrick O'Grady
VeloNews editor at large
This report filed June 18, 2004
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations,
or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and
evidence.
John Adams
Argument in Defense of the [British] Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials
[December 1770]
Okay, how many of you out there have read "LA Confidential - The Secrets of
Lance Armstrong?" Raise your hands. Nobody? Not a single, solitary one of
you?
Then shut the hell up about it already.
Didn't a teacher ever smack you down for trying to bluff your way through a
question about a book you hadn't read? Never heard the old saw about
opinions and a-holes - how everybody has one and thinks it's the other guy's
that stinks? And they say the Irish never let facts sway them in the face of
higher truth; I've yet to see a bog-trotter who could trump an American
sports fan when it comes to matters of faith.
Author David Walsh is Irish, but he appears to have an interest in facts
nonetheless. Honored thrice as Sportswriter of the Year during the British
Press Awards, most recently just three months ago, Walsh has covered the
Tour de France 18 times and written a number of other books, including the
biography of another heralded Mick, the inimitable Sean Kelly.
His co-author, Pierre Ballester, is a former cycling writer for the French
sports daily L'Equipe and the ghost writer behind "Breaking The Chain" by
***** Voet, the tale of the Festina affair that nearly upended the 1998 Tour
de France.
In short, these guys have some chops, a little time on the job. They get a
little closer to the action than you or I do. And when you deride them as
fabricators, scandal-mongers and money-sucking scum, without so much as a
glance at their work, you are doing what you accuse them and the rest of the
press of doing - making it all up, without a shred of evidence to support
your point of view.
This eagerness to shoot the messenger is hardly of recent vintage. "Nobody
likes the man who brings bad news," as Sophocles noted, and a couple
thousand years after he said it journalists as a class enjoy the respect and
admiration normally accorded child molesters, necrophiliacs and IRS
auditors, thanks to fabricators like Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and Janet
Cooke, and to the hordes of sluggardly, talentless hacks infesting many a
newsroom nationwide.
Still, there are a few reportorial diamonds to be found among the lumps of
coal, and you'd know very little about your world, the good or the bad,
without them. I'm not talking about the Woodwards and Bernsteins here,
either; I'm talking about the guys who cover the cops, courts, school boards
and city councils, working long shifts for short wages. Newswriting, like
bicycle racing, is mostly hard, thankless work, and only a very few get rich
and famous doing it.
Like you, I haven't read "LA Confidential." My French depends upon
Babelfish, a pocket-edition Webster's and a hazy recollection of what few
phrases I picked up as a tyke in Ottawa. But from what I've read about the
book, Walsh and Ballester don't claim to be in possession of the truth,
merely of a few facts. They propose that you examine what they believe to be
the facts and make up your own minds as to whether they add up to a smoking
gun. A partnership is implied. When you clap your hands to your ears, shut
your eyes and shout, "LA LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEEEEARRRR YOOOOUUUUU," you
are declining to shoulder your fair share of the burden of staying informed.
I've never met Walsh or Ballester, nor do I have their experience covering
elite European racing. As for Lance, I've spoken with him exactly twice,
once before his diagnosis and once afterward. What I know about him, and
them, is what I've been told by journalists - some of them real ink-stained
wretches, others no more than fans with laptops. If it ever comes out in
English, "LA Confidential" will provide yet another perspective on the
five-time Tour winner, as will the authors' legal combat with their outraged
subject. Whether we will ever learn "the truth" is anybody's guess.
Frankly, whether Lance has engaged in questionable practices is not (or
should not be) on a par with the "third-rate burglary" that brought down an
American president, or the specious arguments for warfare that may bring
down another. Lance is a wealthy, talented athlete, an entertainer, a guy
who gets paid to do what he does because we all like to watch. Nevertheless,
if you count yourself a serious student of the sport, you should have the
intellectual curiosity to take a good, hard look at him, warts and all.
The media being what they are, there will always be plenty of eager hands to
polish the halos of the gods. It takes a firmer hand to point out any grimy
tracks their feet of clay may leave on the world's stage.
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