I had every intention of writing a second post about the Oprah interview of Lance Armstrong this past week following the second episode on Friday night. Instead, the boys wanted to have movie night and we ended up watching Shrek 2 (I think) for the 47th time (I think). I finally got down to watching the rest of the interview today, and although there is not a whole lot more to add to my previous post, one point became abundantly clear: Oprah was a horrible choice for Lance’s first interview, not only for those hoping to hear the truth, but for even Lance himself. I always start with my over-arching question—’What is your goal?’

Trying to figure out what Lance’s goal(s) is (are) is certainly a futile exercise, but I assume it either involves money or competition since those seem to be the main drivers in his life. By doing this interview, Lance either wants to stem the avalanche of lawsuits that are coming his way, convince someone to pay him money for some sort of job, and/or start the process of convincing USADA to let him compete again at some point. With those potential goals here is why Oprah was a horrible choice:

Oprah is friggin clueless. I basically said this the other day, but boy she really saved up her ignorance for the Friday night episode. “You want to compete again on the bicycle? You want to run races on the bike?” I will leave the idiocy of ‘run races on the bike’ portion of the statement alone (other than to point out that it is clear that Oprah has not ‘raced’ ever [the marathon she ran back in the ’90’s was clearly not a ‘race’]). Instead, how could Oprah be incredulous about Lance wanting to race again? I know I said this in the last post, but did she even so much as Google before the interview? The interview did nothing, in my opinion, to convince people like the Andreus from suing him (it probably hardened their resolve, if anything). Nor is someone going to want to hire him and there is no way USADA was swayed in the slightest. So what could Oprah provide? An easy payday. This is why I am even more convinced he got paid for the interview (which he derided Tyler Hamilton for doing with 60 Minutes—although Tyler did not get paid).

Oprah is all about feelings. I said this yesterday, but it became clear in Part 2 that Lance was incapable of feelings (with one exception–see below). Here he had a woman asking him over and over about his feelings and he was unable to show any emotion whatsoever. What did he expect? Even though her questioning was pathetic and even though she was clueless about the sport and about doping, she was trying very hard to make you look human Lance, and she failed. How could Lance go into the interview not knowing Oprah’s only  possible ‘strength’ as an ‘interviewer’? I find it hard to believe that Lance did not do his homework, so I can only conclude that Lance has no feelings when it comes to his doping or the people that he crushed.

The interview served to pose more questions and provided no answers. Despite not learning anything new from this pathetic excuse of an interview, there are now a lot more questions: why go through this charade? when are you going to start naming names? how high up did this go? how much will this cost him? who is going to come out of the woodwork and sue the bejesus out of him? will he ever answer questions under oath? how much did Oprah pay him?

One glimmer of human-ness. The only part of the entire 17 minute interview (after removing all of the commercials) that gave even a glimmer that there was a genuine feeling brewing inside Lance was when he talked about his children. I have no idea if he is a good father or not, but it seemed clear to me that he cares for his children. Why mention it? As a father, I consider the job of ‘parent’ the most important occupation of all. Hopefully, as Lance considers his next steps, he will realize that his choices now will affect his kids for years to come. If he simply acts in their best interest, well, I really would have a tough time faulting him for that.

One final note: since we watched this in the morning, I passed on the wine.

Mistake.