commentaries

Give yourself some credit. You survived cancer by yourself. You did not need Lance Armstrong. While he lied about the use of performance enhancers, he did survive cancer. He also raised a lot of money for cancer. That might redeem his image but he will always be a liar. Don't give his foundation any more money but don't say the cancer community has somehow been the most damaged by his lies.

Equating the foundations good to Armstrong's denial of using drugs is ridiculous and tells me more about the author than confirming any point the article attempted to spin.

This is a good piece. Sorry, Lance, you're a phony. "Apologizing" now is meaningless. And Oprah should be ashamed for using it to get Nielsen points. This so-called apology may have done some good if you had done it years ago and halted your medal-stealing ways. Instead you continued with your cheating and lying and brought disgrace to yourself and the whole cycling community. And sucked a whole of people in in the process.

Unfortunate that author Melinda Henneberger didn't include some pertinent facts about the Livestrong Foundation in her emotional discourse about Lance Armstrong, such as the fact that the Livestrong Foundation (which Armstrong founded) has ZERO connection any more with Armstrong, it is considered one of the nation's best-run cancer research foundations, and it has raised more than $80 million for cancer research from the "tacky plastic bracelets" she so easily dismisses. Criticize Armstrong (the person) all you like, but have the awareness and cognition to distinguish between him and the value of the entirely separate Livestrong Foundation.

Liar? please. Everyone lies at some point in their life. So Melinda the self appointed spokesperson for the cancer community says Lance would have done more good for the world if he had only come clean and told his story as a cautionary tale for others? So she thinks a hypothetical warning to the steroid community on using PID from Lance would have been better than raising half a billion dollars for cancer? I disagree. It's too easy to sit there and judge Lance based on what we now know, bad guy or good guy, as if everyone needs to make up their mind which one he is. Armstrong has done bad things and he has done good things and the two are not mutually exclusive, it's lazy thinking to simplify anyone that way. Humanity is complicated and yeah I wish he did things differently but he didn't, so what, that doesn't mean all the bad always outweighs all the good.

@leftwingnews, it's really misleading to say "don't give money to his foundation" since it's not "his". They kicked him off the board of directors and want nothing to do with him. Why hurt an organization looking to do good--and looking to get out from under his shadow?

Cancer community? Really? My wife battled breast cancer and won, but never felt the need for any artificial support system. It was a tough blow, but she weathered it without the myopic self-pity groups and organizations that so many gravitate towards. She was, in fact, offended that she received so many offers for therapy, as if she was too weak to handle her own affairs. She worked through it with the support of her family and close friends. The point being that we all need to stop worrying about appearances and groups and peripheral flotsam and just focus on taking care of ourselves. Armstrong raised a lot of money for cancer research. Be grateful for that. Everything else is irrelevant.

Set aside the fact that Lance Armstrong cheated at cycling (guess what, they all do!!!!!) -He has raised 1/2 a billion dollars for cancer. 1/2 a Billion! He should win a medal for that, and be stripped of his others.