A year ago I highlighted an excellent rant by Deadspin’s Tommy Craggs in response to Sports Illustrated‘s unabashed cheerleading for the drug war — at least when it was extended to athletes. Now, SI and Craggs are at it again. The dying pillar of “respectable” sports journalism is now running propaganda for the federal government in its quest to put as many famous athletes in jail as possible. Craggs isn’t taking that lying down:
Maybe you’ve heard about Sports Illustrated‘s exciting new Lance Armstrong feature. At bottom, it’s a story about a corrupt man who gets away with cheating because the people who’d ordinarily police it have decided to look the other way.
Which is to say, it’s a story about Jeff Novitzky, federal drug warrior.
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If you’re unfamiliar with Novitzky, he is the former IRS agent who didn’t exactly cover himself in glory the last time around but who is nevertheless heading up the FDA’s investigation into Armstrong. He has behaved far more atrociously than any cyclist poking himself with a needle, and he has done it with the implicit and explicit encouragement of a media that should be bird-dogging his every move. In another life, Novitzky would’ve been digging through Dalton Trumbo’s garbage. In this one, he has walked all over the best parts of the Bill of Rights in a flagrantly illegal raid of a drug testing facility and then very likely leaked the famous names harvested in that raid to certain eager reporters, which is also flagrantly illegal. This isn’t just about cheating in sports. There are real stakes. Thanks to Novitzky, and thanks to the Ninth Circuit cannibalizing itself, and thanks in no small part to the worst instincts of the Obama Administration, we’re now well on our way to an Information Age precedent governing plain-view searches that pretends there’s no difference between a dime bag on the kitchen table and the easily sorted cells of a spreadsheet. Madison wept.
You can reasonably argue that Armstrong’s cheating is an important story, especially given the fierceness of his denials and all that Nike-sponsored self-martyrdom over the years. I can understand the logic, even if I don’t agree. But why aren’t Novitzky’s crimes — which, you know, actually matter in real life — just as big of a deal? Why are sportswriters not only ignoring his cheating but essentially consecrating it under large headlines? If it wasn’t obvious already, the War on PEDs is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the War on Drugs, and this one is likewise being covered by a captive media writing the same kind of stories featuring the same kind of Joe Fridays and the same kind of selective righteousness. Novitzky is running an old con on a grand scale, and Sports Illustrated and The New York Times and many, many others have willingly become the publicity arm of an operation that’s more deeply crooked than Barry Bonds or Lance Armstrong ever were.
Speaking truth to power. What a novel concept.
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Speaking of government cheaters …
Accounting change saves Fed from Insolvency
Huh, I wonder why the rest of us aren’t allowed to do that. Oh, right, I would be in permanent negative liability range and would never again pay taxes to the beast.
From the SI article: “The federal inquiry focuses on the period from 1999 to 2004, during which Armstrong won six of his seven Tour de France titles and the USPS team received more than $40 million toward sponsorship of the squad, which was managed by Tailwind, Inc., according to documents reviewed by SI. Through his attorney, Armstrong claims that he “started at USPS as a low paid, regular rider” and “was never the boss, director, the owner, or the doctor.” But because government sponsorship is involved, if evidence suggests that Armstrong was directing illegal doping activity, the inquiry could result in charges against him of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering, racketeering, drug trafficking and defrauding the U.S. government.”
USPS is subsidized with money stolen from taxpayers, and operates a monopoly on so-called first-class mail that is forcibly collected by US-government thugs. When one is admittedly guilty of sharing in the loot of a thief like USPS, it is all the more difficult to defend oneself against other charges or expect a sympathetic hearing among those who don’t steal, even if one is innocent of those other charges.
Indeed. I’ve always enjoyed the fact that, even though the USPS is completely incapable of posting anything remotely near a profit, it still says it has the loot to blow on a goddamn cycling team.
A cycling team, of all things. Not mail carriers or new cutesy little postage stamps. Bike riders. And NASCAR on top of that. Does a government monopoly need to advertise? Why? Is it that important to at least look like a legitimate business?
What’s next? Should the Army sponsor a race car to persuade us not to send our kids and tax dollars to that OTHER army with the superior service, better prices, and more efficient soldiers? Oh … Oh wait. Same thing.
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