This interview may be three years old, but I've finally discovered Joe Rogan of late and his chat with Armstrong is informative and enjoyable. Note the $100 million lawsuit of which they speak was settled in 2018 for $5 million.
For those interested in the wider story, this BBC documentary is excellent. Be aware that the YouTube postings of it tend to disappear.
To be honest, all these sports juicing scandals continue to produce an ambiguous reaction in me. Quite a few banks cheated, prompting an international recession, then were caught ... and, well, nothing much happened to them at all, at least here in America. We routinely incarcerate minorities for far less.
Maybe money really does have something to do with it? Bogey man Barry Bonds asked the right question, as referenced by Dave Zirin back in 2012:
'It's Bonds. Barry Bonds': The Return of Baseball's Invisible Man, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)
... There is a delight that the baseball cognoscenti takes in making Barry Bonds their “invisible man.” It’s a way to marginalize him without confronting what he represents. He’s a home-run king in exile. He’s the end product of an era where owners made billions selling a steroid-enhanced product. He’s the person who can no longer tell the press to go to hell, because they won’t acknowledge his voice. The press corps once asked Bonds if he thought steroids was cheating. Bonds responded, “Is steroids cheating? You want to define cheating in America? When they make a shirt in Korea for a $1.50 and sell it here for 500 bucks. And you ask me what cheating means?” Now they don’t have to care what he thinks. Now they can humiliate him forever by denying his existence.
No comments:
Post a Comment