Recently, I’ve been talking and thinking about our fave’s being problematic and where is it our job to hold strangers accountable, and does everything have to be so serious or whatever.
And in my mind, I was thinking, “yeah, we should grow empathy!”
But then.
I was looking up more stuff from Latitude 35, because, you know, it all just seems so cool after the women’s rowing adventure and everything.
And I found this podcast. [It’s “Wedu” with a male group of runners from 2020.] And it starts with the camera on the host – Lance Armstrong.
And my gut reaction was like… “what are you doing here?”
And I think in situations like this, that’s where it gets hard. Because when someone does something “small,” it’s kind of easier to move on – especially if they do something royally far away from what they do for a living, and it’s small. (And I know ‘small’ can be very hard to quantify, and can be very subjective.)
But Lance Armstrong’s thing is not small. And it’s not separated from his identity. It’s a HUGE part of it. He’s known for being an athlete. But to my knowledge, all of his titles were stripped away because of all the doping stuff. So his whole entire game is predicated on lies?
Now, even without the doping, he probably was a phenomenal athlete. He has trained SO many hours. And he’s done incredible feats… but again, under at least some false pretenses.
So, what does that mean? Is he just cancelled forever? Because if your livelihood is built on fraud, how do you continue it? I don’t think Milli Vanilli ever bounced back?
But also if that’s been your whole career (and obviously Lance Armstrong had a much longer one than Milli Vanilli, like what are you supposed to do? Not do anything?
I don’t really know what it all means. I just know he gets to host a podcast, and I was taken aback by it, so as much as I’m like “we’re too judgey in society,” some of my gut judgements stick with me, it seems [and I’m still not sure if that’s good, bad, or neutral]!