No no no Lance...we wanted a Boston style confession!

So Lance, they say you're getting ready for the big confession.   Let the pigeons loose, and warm up the ol' spin control machine.

Whassamatta Lance..Bill O'Reilly too tough for you?  

It’ll be huge.  Like televangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker on EPO.  Get your Kleenex ready wielersupporters.    

Boo hoo friggin’ Hoo. 

Disgusting.       

   

The only confession I care to watch is a‘gallows version.'  You know, a final confession just preceding well deserved punishment.  

But alas, such a concept - punishment - is no longer palatable in pudding soft ‘new America’s warped, ‘pop-culture’ morality.   A land where tonight, liberal mainstream-media jackasses who don't know squat about cycling - let alone a steroid from a transfusion - are all buzzing, and all predicting quick public forgiveness following this long awaited revelation.    A land where celebrity grants immunity to the consequences of transgressions:  In this particular case, fraud and perjury.   

Noticed you and Oprah gave ample lead time to let her under-performing network pre-sell a big media buy.   Very thoughtful.  Wonder what 30 seconds will cost on that show?   

Sorry.  None of this is anywhere near good enough.  Not for me anyway.   I want to see a good old Boston-Irish compliant confession. 

You and your complicit Nike-Giro-Trek- etc. etc. bro and dude cabal, should ALL be writing BIG flippin’ checks.   You shouldn't get this opportunity to avail yourselves of a ‘free’ mass media PR event …a carefully contrived ‘glisseur’ escape route:  Media engineered mass-forgiveness, with chief touchy-feely progressive propaganda minister Oprah Winfrey at the helm.   Oh no.  

C'mon Lance, on Oprah of all places?  As Flahute barked to me today:

"That the self-proclaimed 'hardest of all hard men' would choose to give his mea culpa to Oprah, the most sissified, feeling-sharing, kumbaya-singing everybody-gets-a-trophy soccer mom talk show host  says it all...Think she'll bring up LA's multiple works of published fiction? Doubt it. She'll follow his publicist's script to the letter"

"Jaysus...where's the old 60 Minutes when you need them? Maybe since Mike Wallace died there just aren't anymore hard-ass, truth seeking objective TV journalists left. Seems to be an extinct breed. Instead of being ambushed by a CBS camera crew and being called out on being a serial liar and sack of shite, he'll get a hug.   

And maybe an Obama cabinet nomination."

You said it Flahute!  Now calm down boy, and go eat yer Alpo.  I too cringe just imagining the carefully phrased softballs she'll be serving up...         

Crime....Forgiveness....but let's not forget Punishment!    Ah yes, Punishment.  That's the part soft America has an increasingly hard part with these days.   The loophole that Lance and co. think they'll hoodwink the great unwashed into letting him sideslip... as deftly as he avoided that mass pile up in the Passage du Gois.  

You want to earn forgiveness Lance?  Here's what's appropriate in the not so humble opinion of a guy who was cleaning road rash back when you still had diaper rash.  It involves a Calvary you... and your cabal...won't like.     

You AND your criminal cohorts should ALL be personally funding the rebuilding of cycling.   (Not having any role or say in its restructure mind ye… just forking over the financing.)    That's right.  We're talking big checks baby.   No no no..bigger.   Galibier sized.  

Any crocodile tears should only be followed by Lance at the head the line of shamed CEO’s...all head down, and handing over those big flippin' checks to a panel of ‘troll trustees’.    I think it ought to be a trust.  Not the UCI...but 'Change Cycling Now'…  Maybe Betsy Andreu, Greg LeMond, David Walsh, Simeoni, Bassons, Kimmage... you get my drift?  

No, I don't expect any of those folks will be in the studio audience that day.  But they ought to be.   If fact, any acceptable confession should be made first-person, to your wronged peers.   They should be the ones to forgive you first, not your virtual 'flock'. 

In fact, the whole scene ought to be constructed to resemble the surrender on the USS Missouri at the end of WWII..  Screw the Oprah set, I think the Champs Elysee would be an appropriate place for it.   You should walk out, hand over the dough in front of a generation of pros and amateurs.  Confess.  Salute.  Turn and like General McArthur said... just fade away.     

C'mon, you really think we're stupid enough to think you should get off scot free and easy?   No way jongen.  We... lots of folks...want to see the money returned.  Start with some of the dough that came from your best selling works of fiction.  And the ASO's prize money.  And that insurance payment.  And the dollars that came from sales of stuff with swooshes all over it.   C'mon, fork it all back over.    (Some of Whitey Bulger's boys will be down to collect it...)

And oh, by the way...  while you're in the mood to talk, how about splainin' to us why the US Justice department's Birotte 'suddenly' decided to drop that investigation on Memorial Day weekend?    Dr. Brad keeps asking why this is no longer a criminal fraud issue, and I think it seems like a fair question.   How come you guys got to spend a decade reaping the cash without criminal consequences?   I'm sure someone from the US Justice Department will be there on Oprah to explain all that too... right?   

And another thing.  The Oprah network should be forced to give 'Change Cycling Now' at least 3 free 30-second spots.    (NIKE should buy the media)

Crime, Penance and Punishment:   Forgiveness you should get, but it should not get you out of  appropriate punishment.   (No, I don't think you should be allow to enter any triathlons, IMHO.   Remember when Pete Rose was banned from baseball for betting on games?  Back when Americans in charge still had some backbone?)   

As for me, in case you haven't guessed by now, I’m voting w/my feet.  I've been forced to watch a full decade of your tired act, and it's way more than enough.   So I think I’ll pass on watching you, and that P.C. Queen Oprah, and go for a ride that day instead. 

Flandria Cafe is boycotting your media confession, and is calling on all like-minded cafesupporters to join me.  We'll all be on our bikes that day... having a great time.. and reaffirming to ourselves what's really great about cycling.   After, we'll drink a Rodenbach or two, talk about the ride we just did, and the rides we're gonna do.   Brag about old races we won, and those we coulda woulda shoulda won.   

Rest assured, we won't be talking about you Lance.    Cause as much as you'd like us all to still believe, you ain't cycling.