In any event, the cycling champion’s ruthless outlook did not come out of the blue. Armstrong matured in the Reagan-Bush-Clinton years, when the “free market,” selfishness and greed were worshipped at every turn by the entire media and political establishment. “Force works,” declared the Wall Street Journal following the war on Iraq in 1990-91, and the notion that bullying and violence were the solution to each and every problem was communicated through the political system, popular culture and the sports industry.
One doesn’t want to exaggerate, but Armstrong, in his intimidation tactics, relentless, almost provocative, lying, and his apparent belief he could get away with anything, seems to have borrowed more than a little from official America’s relations with the rest of the globe over the past two decades.
Bound up with the money, corporate sponsorships and emergence of the “athlete as entrepreneur” has been the advent of the celebrity culture in America, which also swept Armstrong along in its wake. Indeed, his conversation with Oprah Winfrey, on national television, was one of that culture’s false and stage-managed operations. (No doubt all sorts of legal and financial calculations went into Armstrong’s appearance, including perhaps the first step in a process of publicly rehabilitating himself as part of an effort to get his lifetime sports ban lifted.)
He could have easily been a Wall Street bankster.
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