Feet of Clay

Thank you, Lance, and thank you, Oprah. The cat, as they say, is out of the bag. Our world has been rocked. Now what?

Shouldn’t we be a little used to hearing about the fatal flaws of our heroes or pillars of the community? Lance is just the latest in a pretty long line, of course. Many of the recent ones are from sports, like Jerry Sandusky. Politics? Arnold Schwarzenegger. Entertainment/media? Jimmy Savile of the BBC. Finance? Bernie Madoff. Part of us must enjoy seeing the mighty fall – but there’s the other part that yearns for someone absolutely flawless.

I’ve always believed that Human Being 1.0 comes with a “worship chip.” That’s why we invented religion. Atheism doesn’t fix this. If we don’t have religions or churches in the traditional sense, we make them up. The Baseball Hall of Fame. The Oscars. American Idol.

Americans in particular, as I have often said, turn everything into an Olympic sport. If you look at it from a distance, the whole notion of putting singers with widely differing talents – or actors, for that matter – into some kind of competition is a little silly. I knew the Last Days couldn’t be far off when I saw a similar competition on one of the food channels about who made the best cupcakes.

But we do have to have our winners. Those who get close to the top often feel the most pressure to get there and stay there. They know that no one is going to remember them if they only win the Silver Medal. Or become First Runner-Up. Or the last to be voted off the island. So they do bad things – in the case of Mr. Armstrong, some pretty awful things. Once they get to the top, they get into an almost life-and-death struggle to hide anything that would threaten that status. The tragedy is, those within striking distance of the top have extraordinary talent long before they dope, cheat, lie or commit other unsavory acts.

Once they’re on top, the majority of us want to keep them there. Investigative reporters go against the grain. They try to give us the truth. Someday, the majority of us are grateful, but for a long time, we just don’t want to hear it – which is why it takes extraordinary courage to do that job. The criers in the wilderness face scorn, financial ruin, and even threats of death.

When one of our idols is actually toppled, we’re ready to fix blame, but as usual, the idol wouldn’t have been on a pedestal quite as high without our help.

BTW, I write this under the influence of a performance-enhancing drug, which you may have heard of: caffeine. I leave it to you to decide if the performance was actually enhanced.

Flying Down to Rio

Why the long faces about Chicago losing the 2016 Olympics? OK, I’m not from Chicago. And I suppose there are more than a few red faces now that Oprah, Michelle, and the President couldn’t make it happen. But isn’t it time South America had the Games?

South America is a continent. Yet the rest of the world generally seems to ignore it. How many news stories do Norte Americanos hear on a daily basis about South America? OK, there’s Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Colombian drug cartels. And, oh yeah, the Falklands war, going back a ways. But South America gets so little respect, the rest of us don’t even bother to stereotype it anymore.

It’s been pointed out that a South American Olympic venue might be less subject to terrorism than a U.S. location. And who can argue with Rio as a physical backdrop? Brazil in general is considered one of the hemisphere’s leaders when it comes to energy independence. No doubt the country has problems, though they will now get more than passing attention from the rest of the world. Good heavens, we might even learn something.

And finally, who wants the Olympics anyway? They’re expensive, and often considered a giant pain in the rear end by many in the chosen community. I say, let the South Americans have their turn.