Armstrong Gives Us Hope Against Dope

Tony Kornheiser wrote a really good article about Lance in today's Washington Post.

My favorite excerpt from the article:

" It would be gratifying if McGwire and Bonds and Jones were clean because we want their records to be honest. But it's almost like we need Armstrong to be clean. Hardly any of us can hit 500-foot home runs, or run 100 meters in under 10 seconds, or punt a football 70 yards in the air. But all of us can get cancer. You want to believe you can beat it. You look at this little guy pedaling uphill in the rain, and you tell yourself that if Lance can beat cancer, you can, too.

That's the compact we have with Lance Armstrong that we don't have with Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds or Jose Canseco. Those guys are massive and superhuman. What could we possibly have in common with them? We're invested psychologically in Lance Armstrong in ways we can never be invested in them. They're about power. He's about hope. He gives us hope against our darkest fear, the fear of death. That's why so many of us hope Lance Armstrong doesn't cheat, even as we fully expect the others to. "