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Lance Armstrong Was Robbed

I just saw a report that Lance Armstrong is stepping down as chairman of the Livestrong charity he built to inspire and empower cancer sufferers. It comes after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency reported “overwhelming evidence” that Armstrong engaged in doping while he was a professional cyclist.

Armstrong was robbed.

Mood music:

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Much has been made of doping in professional sports. Frankly, I couldn’t care less if athletes use steroids. So what? The media acts like it’s a new thing in professional sports, when the reality is that some form of drug enhancement has been going on in the profession longer than I’ve been alive. To be the athlete that inspires millions, you need a raw talent and drive that most people could only hope to have. Dope all you want. If you don’t have the talent and determination to begin with, you’re going nowhere.

Armstrong’s case is particularly sad. Here is a man who overcame testicular cancer that spread to his lungs and brain and then won the Tour de France seven times. He became a hero in the eyes of millions and that helped turn his Livestrong foundation into one of the biggest cancer-fighting charities in the country.

As far as I’m concerned, he wasn’t a hero because he won the Tour de France. He was a hero simply because he went the distance multiple times in that brutal competition. Had he come in 10th place, he still would have been a hero to me, because he overcame a deadly disease and showed sufferers everywhere that physical limitations need not stop them from living out their dreams.

People say steroids gave him an unfair advantage. I say the damage his body suffered from cancer put him at a huge disadvantage going in.

The doping controversy is bullshit. It was the creation of politicians that wanted something to grandstand over. Go ahead and disagree.

Some people I admire are fighting cancer right now, and because of the money raised by Livestrong they have better odds than they would have 10 or 15 years ago.

I agree with Forbes writer Chris Smith that it’s time to legalize steroids in professional sports. He writes:

If we really want to level the playing field, it may be time to head in the other direction: legalize performance enhancers.

Not only would the playing field suddenly be even for all players, it would be at a higher level. A huge part of watching sports is witnessing the very peak of human athletic ability, and legalizing performance enhancing drugs would only help athletes climb even higher. Steroids and doping will help pitchers to throw harder, home runs to go further, cyclists to charge for longer and sprinters to test the very limits of human speed. …

Detractors will argue that steroids and doping can pose health risks to the athletes involved, but athletes undertake serious health risks by simply walking onto the field or straddling a bike. Just last year, a media car ran Johnny Hoogerland off the road during the Tour de France, sending him headlong into barbed wire. Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann famously had his leg broken and career ended mid-game, and the devastating longterm effects of concussions are rapidly becoming apparent. Plus, if performance enhancers were made legal, then they could be safely distributed and regulated so that players aren’t forced to rely on shady back alley transactions for untested drugs.

We love to make heroes out of people who do big things. Unfortunately, we love to tear them down, too. Armstrong has done so much good for a lot of people. This whole affair is a shitty way to repay him.

Lance Armstrong

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Christian Brochure: “Being Gay Is Bad, Like Overeating”

Some days it’s not easy being a Christian soldier. When my comrades talk in a way that makes sense, it’s all well and good. But when they say stupid things, such as being gay is bad — like bullying and overeating — my faith is tested.

Mood music:

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Fortunately for me, I learned a long time ago not to base my faith on the social politics of mere mortals, including those with leadership positions in the Catholic Church and elsewhere. If a priest says something I find hateful and out of line or is run out of town for spending church funds on porn, I remember that we all fail every day, and that the most important thing is one’s relationship with Christ and Christ alone.

Today’s tirade comes after seeing a brochure from Mission: America’s Linda Harvey that lumps being gay with being a bully or a glutton. Harvey’s new guide on how to talk to kids about homosexuality states that, among other things, “it’s not right to tell someone that being homosexual is okay. The person may be feeling sad because of being bullied, but never try to make him or her feel better by saying ‘gay’ is okay.”

She builds on this ridiculousness by comparing homosexuality to overeating: “Kids who are overweight are sometimes bullied, too. And we might want to make that person feel better. But it would be a mistake to say that overeating is a good thing, right?”

One of the major tenets of Christianity I try — and often fail — to observe is to not judge others. “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven,” says the Bible (Luke 6:37).

And yet, when it comes to the issue of homosexuality, all church leaders ever seem to do is pass judgement. They tell us that being gay is a lifestyle choice. They tell us that being gay is among the worst of all sins. I have several relatives who are gay, and I can tell you this: Not one of them woke up one morning and decided they’d be gay because it seemed like a cool lifestyle choice. Several gay friends and family fought their homosexuality, turning to drugs and suicide attempts. They eventually realized they are good people who have much to offer their fellow human beings. They pay their taxes, love their relatives, friends and community, and do God’s work every day in a variety of ways:

They help feed the poor.

They teach children to be kind to each other.

They take on jobs with massive responsibility and rise to the occasion.

They do things Jesus would approve of. They also do things Jesus would frown upon. But don’t we all? And Jesus still loves us all, no matter our failings.

I hope Harvey learns to stop judging people she doesn’t know. Telling children to judge others is un-Christian and contrary to what Harvey says she believes. Telling children it’s bad to be gay, even when it’s far beyond the individual’s control, is irresponsible. Telling them it’s OK to dislike a person because they aren’t like you is telling them it’s OK to judge people without having all the facts.

That’s the recipe from which a lot of bullying rises up.

PHOTO: Mission: America was founded in 1995 by Linda Harvey.

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I Accept God’s Plan, But I Don’t Have to Like It

I’ve spent my life accepting God’s plan. Whenever I think of the deaths of my brother and best friend, I chalk it up to God’s plan. Surely, I tell myself, their deaths were part of some greater good mere mortals could never understand.

Accept it, yeah. But I’ve never liked losing those two. There’s a lot in life that may be part of God’s plan. I truly believe that I have to accept it and work the experiences into being a better human being. But like it? Not today. Probably not ever.

Mood music:

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Those are very personal examples, but something in the American political discourse has me thinking about it. Friday, I showed you a quote from Jon Hubbard, a Republican state representative from Arkansas. I called him an asshole for suggesting that slavery may have been a blessing in disguise for African Americans, because through that awful American tragedy they get to live in the “greatest nation ever established on the face of the Earth.”

A reader and friend commented, asking why I felt the need to stoop low and call Hubbard an asshole. She then quoted Scripture. I’ve always loved that about her, because she’s one of those rare people who can discuss faith and actually have the biblical knowledge to back it up. She also said:

I read his statement as comparing the ultimate fate of those once enslaved in the US to those who were not and now live in famine, poverty and a daily threat of torture or death.

When comparing where one is today because of past events and where one could be if they had not occurred, perhaps the right statement is “there but for the grace of God go I”. That isn’t to excuse slavery, or it’s horrifying existence, but to look back on it (as we often do when we are past some horrible experience) and consider it in terms of God’s plans and how He might have worked it to our benefit.

But that’s probably asking too much from people who think with their emotions and overreact to every little statement they read from the “opposite” side.

I don’t disagree with any of that, and I get that Hubbard was suggesting something similar. What angered me about Hubbard’s statement was that his language almost makes it sound like African Americans got a hell of a deal. They were enslaved, living in famine, poverty and a daily threat of torture or death. But now their great-great-great-great grandkids get to live “in the greatest country on Earth.” In hindsight, calling him an asshole wasn’t my finest hour, and I apologize for that. I don’t apologize for disagreeing with a guy who justified evil as a blessing in disguise.

The deaths of my brother and friend were part of God’s plan. We had no control over them; we didn’t cause them and we couldn’t prevent them. Could Michael or Sean have prevented their deaths? Hard to say.

But slavery is humanity’s evil. Mankind could have prevented it or ended it sooner. Mankind had control. Just because God made something good come out of it doesn’t mean slavery was a blessing. If blacks had been free from the first, they would have had better lives in the colonies and their descendants would have better lives now.

It’s particularly problematic to say slavery was a blessing because even after slavery was abolished, blacks were still marginalized and treated brutally. They were excluded from many of the blessings of American life for more than a century after slavery ended. Many died in lynchings and their homes were burned to the ground.

Are African Americans in a better place today? Surely. That doesn’t mean I have to agree that their past subjugation was a cloud with a silver lining; that they were getting what was good for them and they just didn’t know it at the time.

Just as I don’t have to like the things that happened in my personal history, whether it was part of God’s bigger design or not.

There’s a huge difference between accepting something and liking it.

Rough Justice

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Was She Bullied, or Did the Truth Cut Too Deep?

A good friend disliked yesterday’s post, “The Fat Lady Sang, And It Was Beautiful.” His main criticism was that I centered it on my own weight battles, which I traced back to Crohn’s Disease, Prednisone and addiction.

Mood music:

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Livingston, a morning anchor at WKBT in La Crosse, Wisconsin, went on air after getting an email that read in part:

Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain.

After reading the email she received, Livingston then took her critic apart, noting that he doesn’t know her well enough to pass judgement. She also accused him of bullying her. I applauded her for doing this because I felt her critic wrongly assumed she and other overweight people simply made a choice to be obese. My argument was that weight trouble can come from a variety of factors and that this guy was out of line.

My friend felt my response was based on assumptions and that framing my complaint in the context of my past issues with Prednisone and Crohn’s Disease didn’t jibe with the news woman’s situation. “Does the anchor woman share those same issues?” he asked. If she doesn’t and her obesity is simply a matter of her not taking care of herself, he said, my comments were off the mark.

“I also have issues with those that view the original comment as bullying,” my friend continued. “Some view things through the eyes of responsibility. Others just want to place blame and make excuses.”

For all we know, Jennifer Livingston falls into the latter camp, he said, concluding, “What you wrote is representative of not having all the facts.”

I agree that many people make excuses for being overweight and that their real problem is laziness and gluttony. There’s a joke making the rounds where a fat guy tells his doctor, “The problem is obesity runs in my family.” The doctor responds, “No, the problem is that no one in your family runs.”

When someone lets their body go to crap because they don’t feel like doing what’s good for them, they are being bad role models, especially when it comes to their children and how they’re allowed to develop the same bad habits. I took one such parent to task for that a while back in “When Parents Fail.”

Unfortunately, a lot of people who work hard to be good role models and take care of themselves end up overweight anyway. One friend of mine gained a lot of weight because he developed a foot infection that left him unable to do much physical activity.

As for Livingston, I don’t know why she’s overweight, and I don’t care. These days, a lot of people are hired to anchor news shows because they look like supermodels. That Livingston was able to break through that and succeed in the industry speaks volumes. TV media is a cut-throat field and you don’t succeed unless you work your ass off. As far as I’m concerned, that’s an example of a good role model.

Livingston is also a good role model for showing that you don’t have to be someone else’s idea of perfect to be on TV or to do a job. It’s not just men who come in all shapes and sizes. Society says that women must be skinny to an unhealthy degree and look perfect. She’s not perfect, but that doesn’t mean everything she does is wasted.

Actually, I don’t think perfect role models exist. People do big things and overcome obstacles in ways that inspire others to do better. But they make big mistakes along the way. It’s called being human.

Finally, let’s look at Livingston’s use of the word bully. That’s what she called Kenneth Krause, the man who sent her the email. To me, a bully taunts you with names, making sure everyone in the vicinity can hear it, and makes threats. Krause did none of these things. He called her a bad role model for being obese and called it a choice. Obviously, I disagree.

This guy was mean, superior, judgmental, disrespectful, and prejudiced. He doesn’t think fat people should be on the air.

Fuck that.

But was Krause a bully? He didn’t threaten her or call her names in earshot of others, which is how I picture the act of bullying. I don’t think he’s a bully per se. But consider these definitions Erin (my wife and editor) found:

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a bully as “a person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people.”

The fact that Krause only wrote in once probably doesn’t fit, but he was cruel and overbearing, especially to someone he thought was weaker. And he never apologized, saying instead that she should follow his advice.

More important, though, to bully, says AHD, is “to treat in an overbearing or intimidating manner”; “to make (one’s way) aggressively.” Krause did treat her in an overbearing way and he was aggressive about trying to get his own way: that she lose weight.

No matter where Livingston’s weight problems come from, what Krause did was wrong.

Disagree if you wish. But that’s my position.

Jennifer Livingston

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The Fat Lady Sang, and It Was Beautiful

I just read about some asshole who told an overweight news anchor that she’s a bad role model for children. As someone who has had a lifelong struggle with weight, this hits me like a punch to the gut.

Mood music:

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Jennifer Livingston, a morning anchor at WKBT in La Crosse, Wisconsin, went on air after getting an email that read in part: “Surely you don’t consider yourself a suitable example for this community’s young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain.”

On air, she took this guy apart piece by piece. As someone who struggles with weight and self esteem over appearance, I applaud Livingston. Here’s the TV segment:

Is Livingston overweight? She says she is, and I guess appearance speaks for itself, though I feel like a shit for saying so. But when I look at her, I see nothing wrong. Here’s a woman who has succeeded on television despite the demand these days that women on TV be skinny everywhere but in the chest and behind. She’s got guts. She’s real and, in my estimation, a pretty good role model for kids.

Kids live in a particularly cruel world, where classmates call them names over weight and appearance, among other things. It’s always been this way and, I think, always will. I’ve lived it. Sometimes the name-calling stops once you hit high school; other times it gets worse. Either way, kids that age become obsessed about how they fit in, and  that’s where those who don’t feel like they fit in turn to drugs, alcohol and food to escape. Some, like me, survive it and find a way to thrive in the world. Others don’t, dying from their addictions and depression that become so overwhelming that they choose to end it.

What infuriated me most about the letter writer’s rebuke was how he called obesity “one of the worst choices a person can make.” That’s probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

Sure, we all make bad choices in life. We choose not to exercise and take on weight as a result. We make bad career and financial choices, which can lead to addictive behavior, including overeating. But nobody chooses to be fat. Nobody rationally decides to grow obese. The extra flesh is often the result of many things.

For me, it was a childhood of Prednisone intake for Crohn’s disease that drove the appetite into overdrive after periods of not being allowed any food at all. By adulthood, food had become the focus of my addictive impulses. I binged my way to 280-plus pounds, not because I made a choice to be fat, but because I couldn’t  back away from a binge. The more I ate, the more I felt like a filthy, sub-human slave.

A choice? Fuck you, pal.

There are plenty of fat people in history who became the ultimate role models. For me, Leslie West of the band Mountain, creator of some of the fattest, most powerful riffs ever, is one of mine. He has lost the weight in more recent years but has maintained his fat sound, which I mean as a compliment. There’s also Winston Churchill. His portly appearance didn’t matter to a country that needed his leadership in the face of Nazi aggression.

I’ve maintained a 65-pound weight loss for more than three years now by cutting flour and sugar from my diet and weighing out most of my meals. But I’ll never be thin. I continue to be what one of my kids described recently as “wide.” Sometimes I wish I were thinner, but I care less about that as I get older. What’s more important to me is mental clarity, and my food choices are driven by what’ll get me there, not what’ll get me to a 32-inch waistline.

As a weight-challenged person, I now have a new hero: Jennifer Livingston.

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You Don’t Need Rage to Be a Badass

When I was in my teens and early 20s, I let my rage flow freely in public. I’d drop f-bombs, flip people off and deliberately cut people off in traffic. That I couldn’t control myself was only part of it. In my young and stupid mind, I thought these attributes made me cool.

Mood music:

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Funny thing about having a chip on your shoulder: It obstructs the flow of sanity and common sense to the brain, resulting in you act like an asshole. This is especially true when you’re young. Being seen as a badass is a long-sought-after goal among the youth. Hell, I still go for the badass vibe, and I’m 42 years old. I just try to restrict it to the glowering in my Facebook profile pics. Other than that, I’ve found that it’s better to treat people as you want to be treated — with kindness. For me, some days are better than others in that department.

I bring this up because I see the attitude I had in my teens and 20s in a lot of 30-somethings these days. Maybe it’s the Facebook phenomenon. People tend to act out more on Facebook because they have a captive audience. There are folks who complain about everyone who’s not like them. Folks who prattle on about how shitfaced they are, about how people with religious and political beliefs different from theirs are trash, and so on.

This kind of carrying on isn’t badass. It’s just being an ass.

You want badass? Here are some real examples:

  • The mom with the special-needs child who leaves the security of a crappy job and launches her own business in the monstrous face of risk, finding a way to balance the success of that business with the needs of everyone around her, including the special-needs child.
  • The hospital nurse who wipes the puke off your face and empties your bedpan without batting an eyelash, then goes home and cleans up the bodily fluids their babies toss around.
  • The 50-something musician who never made it big but continues to play to half-empty bars because they’re happy as long as just one person gets something from it.
  • The person who got hit by two different cars over the course of a few days, sustaining serious injuries, and who started documenting not only their own recovery process but also those of others, showing the world that nothing is impossible.
  • The congresswoman who survived a gunshot to the head and became a national hero capable of attaining higher office but who chose to leave the limelight and focus on her physical and spiritual growth instead.
  • The guy who put down the bottle and pills and rebuilt his life.
  • The cancer patient who who tells you everything they’re grateful for and tells a few jokes when they could be sulking and despairing.

I could go on, but you get the point.

If you’re dissatisfied with your life and compensate by trying to be a badass through trolling, insults and braggery about how fucked up you got the night before, you’re doing it wrong.

Pretty Badass

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Lessons From Facebook Unfriend Finder

I recently re-activated the Facebook Unfriend Finder that I wrote about last winter, after discovering my wife was using a similar plug-in. Given my past paranoia over why certain people unfriended me, she thought it was a bad idea for me to use it. But I figured if she could use it, so could I. A few weeks in, here’s what I’ve learned.

When your friend count goes down, it’s usually not because you offended someone. It’s more likely because they deactivated their profile or because they never really knew you to begin with. When the Unfriend Finder alerts me to someone leaving my network, most of the time it’s because they de-activated their profile. I have gotten unfriended outright, but it’s usually someone who was only a remote connection who I never really talked to.

When you work in the media, it’s not uncommon to accept a lot of strangers into your network and vice versa. I’ll accept friend requests from strangers because I figure they’re looking for easy access to my security articles or this blog. Some will accept a friend request to see if they’re interested in the content you’re pushing and defriend when they decide they don’t want it. Fair enough.

Some of the strangers I’ve connected with have become good friends over time. That makes it all worth it to me because, as the saying goes, no man is a failure who has friends. Some folks have annoyed me with their political diatribes and mean-spirited jabs at others, so I’ve cut them loose. I excised someone yesterday, in fact.

For the most part, though, my core network has stuck around. That tells me all the worrying I did was for nothing.

In the final analysis, you can only be yourself in the social networking world. You can’t change for the sake of pleasing everyone. It’s better to take the occasional stand and be disagreed with than go along to get along. Maybe you are someone who should change because you tend to be a jerk online and off-. If you are, this post won’t inspire you to change.

A little something to consider when you see your connection count go down.

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Five Steps for a Less-Irritating Facebook Presence

Editor’s note: This is a sequel to yesterday’s post, “Stupid Things People Say on Facebook.” In this installment, Bill outlines the steps he takes to be less of a jerk on Facebook. He admits he’s not perfect, especially when it comes to the fifth example.

Mood music:

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My personal rules for using Facebook:

  1. No bitching. If I’m having a bad day, I don’t complain about it in my status updates. Since I hate it when other people do this, I figure I’d be a hypocrite to do it myself.
  2. No badmouthing. I never badmouth people from work (not that I have reason to; my colleagues are awesome) on Facebook. People who trash the boss, the HR department, the customer or the coworkers risk being alienated and ultimately fired. I also abstain from badmouthing family members and neighbors in my status updates. I do tear into people on this blog, which gets posted on Facebook, but these are longer commentaries that take a critical look at human nature. No hateful hit-and-run one-liners in my updates.
  3. No threats. If you threaten to badmouth someone, beat them up, scratch up their car or flip off someone’s children, for example, you are a bully who needs to get kicked off Facebook. Fortunately, Facebook appears to be on top of the bullies.
  4. Be creative. Most of the time, I just share posts from my two blogs and the occasional amusing quote from my children. Once in a while, I’ll share a clever meme or a rock album I’m enjoying. In other words, I try to share the creative stuff. I’m not perfect, though. Which brings me to number 5.
  5. No excessive posting. I’m guilty as charged. One of my OCD habits has been to post my blog pieces by the ton. I know I’ve been unfriended and unfollowed for it, and rightly so. But everything is a teachable moment, and when I entered a writing and posting blackout in the two weeks before the relaunch of this blog, I found that traffic was just as consistent without all the repeat posts. So I’ve made a conscious effort to dial back the reposting significantly. I still repost stuff, especially on the weekends when I usually take a writing break. But I think I have the frequency down to a trickle.

If I still have work to do there, I’m sure some of you will let me know.

Facebook Bizarro

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Stupid Things People Say on Facebook

On Facebook, I try to conduct myself just as I would in any other social situation. People who go on there to whine and throw around vitriol disgust me, and I confess to a sick enjoyment of sites that make fun of those posts. We Know What You’re Doing is a new site that documents how stupid people people can be on Facebook.

Mood music:

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I often fall victim to the Facebook Unfriend Syndrome: that nagging feeling you get when someone unfriends you. You wonder if you offended the person and want to ask them why they left. It’s a stupid state of mind, to be sure. But having OCD is partly about developing stupid compulsions.

Indeed, I have offended people over things I’ve written in this blog. A close friend got mad at me for something I wrote and ditched me, though she recently added me back. My own mother unfriended me because she couldn’t handle my version of past events. I long ago accepted that I’m going to lose people along the way. That’s life, especially when you’re the outspoken type.

But there are depths I will never stoop to, and We Know What You’re Doing is full of examples.

Take this rant from Jimmy, who hates his boss:

I hate my boss. He cut off my pay cauz I slept in for one day, and now I’ll not have enough to go out for tha 12th :@

Or this one from Anastasia R., who has homicidal thoughts about her boss:

Im getting so mad right now I hate my boss Jay I hope he dies better yet I feel like killin him if you in a bad mood don’t take it out on everyone at the job like wtf its way to hot to take your shit-_- #Piss off

A lot of people captured on this site like to brag about their hangovers. As annoying as that can be, I think it’s better than trashing your boss. But really, Lukey D., I think you might have a deeper problem going on:

fuck it, im hungover again so im going to buy some shoes. and probably drink a lot more.

Mike D. wants you all to know about his new phone number. Call one, call all:

ok folks. New phone number is 07770xxx6xx

This isn’t the first site to aggregate dumb Facebook posts. One of my personal favorites is What the Facebook. I particularly enjoy the responses it captures with the original post, including those from bosses who have been criticized.

The security journalist in me is always warning people to watch what they say on Facebook, because there’s no privacy to be had in the land of social networking. You have to police your own mouth.

There is one unexpected side effect of We Know What You’re Doing: It’s made me feel a lot more tolerant of those posts where people complain about being depressed, alone, unloved and burdened by difficult family members. It sure beats watching someone blather on about their sexual prowess or drunken escapades.

Facebook for Dummies

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Death Etiquette: Pay Your Respects, Even If They Hate You

Someone I know just learned that her ex’s maternal grandfather died. Though this man was like a grandfather to her, she’s getting pressure to stay away from the wake and funeral because her ex-mother-in-law doesn’t want her around.

Some of you might say she should stay away, that her ex-mother-in-law’s wishes should come before other considerations. After all, it’s her father who died, and she needs all the comforting loved ones could give her. She shouldn’t have to see people she can’t handle.

I can appreciate that sentiment. But I don’t agree.

Mood music:

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I recently went through a similar experience. The dad of one of my best friends passed away last fall. Nobody told me to stay away, and they wouldn’t have done so. But various members of the family have been angry with me in the last decade and a half, so I felt some pressure to stay away all the same.

In the end I attended the wake and the funeral. Some of the family were as cold to me as I had expected. But the deceased was a great man who played an important role in my life, so I’m glad I did it.

And that’s the point, really: When someone you care about dies, you have to do what you feel is right to honor that person’s memory. If that person was special to you, then your presence will honor them. The desires of other mourners — no matter how close they were to the dead — are secondary.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you flaunt your presence in front of those who may not want you there. Go in, quickly offer them condolences, say a prayer in front of the casket and go find a corner where you don’t have to see certain people. There will always be someone there to talk to, and they won’t care if you get along with the family or not.

If you stay away because someone can’t handle you, it’ll haunt you forever. That would be a damn shame.