Posted on 09/13/2005 1:12:26 PM PDT by smoothsailing
Lance Armstrong and the French disconnection
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Andrew Longman
OPINION
There is a peril in western culture, a weakness, that we ought well to root out and not give credence to as we seek to win the war with terroristic Islamism and further reformulate ourselves in a leaner, better fashion.
It is not quite right to ascribe the adjective "Frenchness" to this trait, but as the nation and people of France often choose to portray this quality in media and in politics I can say that there is a loose fit to that term.
Shall we employ it for lack of a better? Perhaps Francois-ness would more artistically capture. Yes, done.
Francois-ness is the odd and Bohemian presupposition of one's own superiority in the absence of objective evidence to support the claim. This is the starting point of the problem.
I do not mean when one legitimately understands objective aspects to be really better than something else. No. I am referring to that irrational predisposition which believes, unaffected by facts, that a superiority exists simply because you are artsy, you are full of feeling, you are Francois.
Charles de Gaulle, entering Paris after the Normandy successes played out, demanded of Churchill and Roosevelt to be treated like a great head of state. Churchill and Roosevelt were disgusted. To de Gaulle, deeds and facts mattered not. It was all about having Gaul.
Today in France we have a single witness claiming Lance Armstrong's perfidy. L'Equipe has printed that it has evidence he is a doper, they claim a laboratory found traces of EPO - a drug which multiplies the presence of red blood cells - in samples taken from the athlete in 1999.
I am not interested in the situation itself so much as I am fascinated by the reaction of Francoisness.
All over and everywhere there is accusatory jumping up and down which acts as if the charges are true. The French press does not say, "If the allegations are proved, his reputation would be tarnished...". They are saying instead, "Even if these allegations are born out not to be true, his reputation is still tarnished." And that, my friends is the distillation of Francoisness and why, I'll hazard, people who believe such things are not good allies in war.
It is deeply bizarre and disturbing if we recognize that the concept has a root put down deep into the consciousness of the Western democracies.
No, if the allegations are not true, Armstrong's reputation is not tarnished. If the allegations are not true, the people who make the allegations are tarnished. But the Francois press never thinks that. They are the Francois press. They cannot ever be tarnished. It's because of who they are. They tarnish others, they do not ever get tarnished themselves.
Did Armstrong dope?
Factually: there is not enough evidence to say that he did and we must therefore presume innocence until all is heard in full.
There is one piece of evidence: one test.
There is one witness: a French newspaper. But these witnesses then call into question their own credibility by immediately insisting Armstrong's reputation is destroyed despite the fact that the facts remain in the jury room.
This is a subtle point which needs to be exposed: we as democracies, as public peoples, cannot behave like that and survive.
France was absolutely notorious in the lead up to the Iraq war for making wild and foolish conclusions based on what? Their predispositions. Their preferences. Their assumptions. Their Francoisness.
To them it was enough to feel they knew. They did not feel any burden to actually know. They were not speaking about poetic truths, emotional truths which could be described in metaphors. No, the lead up to Gulf War II was real danger, life and death, men and armies and Abu Nidal. But to them it was all how they felt about the opera and they'd didn't feel nice. And so, based on that, a major ally in the war against terroristic Islamism evaporated and couldn't be counted on in the clutch, in the moment of decision. Bad news. Highly indicative bad news.
What should be happening in the press, and what I'll attempt here, is to say: If it is true what L'Equipe is alleging, then it should be exceedingly easy to verify with multiple witnesses, repeatability.
Simply take a few millilitres of sample and send it anonymously to five or six laboratories around the world along with many other blind samples. Code them all with numbers, present them mixed with blanks.
If multiple other laboratories confirm the evidence of chemical, fine. If they don't, fine. But the absolutely critical thing for the French, for us all, is that we as public people and as private people insist that objective truth, supported by evidences, be our requirement in all things wherein we pass judgment.
Societies which endure and prevail believe in and allow only the cultivation of public truth, not the affirmation of public prejudice. If L'Equipe refuses, which I shall prejudicially presume to be likely, we can all know that they were reviewing French opera, not performing science.
The law of Moses, reiterated by Jesus Christ, insisted, "Let everything be established by two or more witnesses." We are conducting war. We are conducting the reformation of our culture.
We cannot afford this tastes-and-preferences driven attitude which pretends to determine facts independent of measurements. It is perfectly permissible to become a partisan after you know the truth.
Indeed then it may well be duty to do so. But to become fervently partisan before you know the truth - that's the death of the West and we must avoid it.
This is the great desire of the great majority of the people of the Western Democracies, certainly of the USA - that the notions which drive public policy and the conduct of the war should be based on realities confirmed by multiple and credible witnesses and not on the predilections of Francois with Gaul.
Mr. Armstrong is an icon, a symbol, a focal point of public discussion of what it means to be successful. Being a sportsman he is also the subject of great operatic passion - both for and against.
He is therefore an excellent example, a good litmus test, for our behavior as a people, how we accept or dismiss true success.
Let's show them that America can withhold its judgment, even in the most passionate of circumstance, until all the facts are in.
Note to the French press. We here in America uphold our heroes or throw them down, fight our wars or refrain from doing so, love our religion or abandon it based on the very best objective truth and balance we can find. And we're not really into opera.
© 2005 IllinoisLeader.com -- all rights reserved
I thought Lance was gay?
Who Gives French!
Are you saying Cheryl Crow is a cross-dresser?
ping...
Sounds an awful lot like Dan Rather insisting that "It wasn't the truth of the accusations against Bush, it was the seriousness of the charges!'
"Le 'backbone'? Le 'testicles'? What are zeeze tings"
(French doctor, baffled by Lance's CT scan)
Not true, it took a real ball to come back like he did.
hmmm... Sounds like RatherGate - The evidence is fraudulent, but the story is still true.
In a search of Lance's room where he stayed in France during the recently completed Tour de France, French authorities found soap, deodorant and toothpaste, all of which have been banned in France for at least 50 years.
Lance was also found to be anatomically different than the average Frenchman. His anatomy actually has features not found on the French, namely, testicles and a backbone.
Testicle (singular). One was removed for cancer.
How about "Francois se quoi", as in "je ne se quoi"?
I believe all the "positive" test results were from the same original batch of blood drawn - including the other players having similar results.
Lance DID take EPO with his chemotherapy. He said it saved his life. It IS commonly prescribed for that.
This is the essence of John Francois Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and other Democrats.
He seemed pretty happy the last time I saw him.
It is odd that the author,who obviously see's the French as snobbish and unreliable,would think the samples could be accepted if only blind tested by nuetral labs.
I agree with you,that's a tremendous flaw in the authors argument.Thanks for pointing it out!
A little factoid about EPO. I was at Masters Nationals Track Cycling Championship this year in Indianapolis, and had a discussion with a biochemist. EPO is a rather fragile molecule, which even in the best freeze condition, breaks down, a half life measured in a few months at best. So the claim of EPO found in a six year old sample becomes quite questionable.
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