« Faulty to a fault | Main | Mommy, my record is broken »
February 11, 2006
Run Wayne Run
Damien Cox, about whom I have nothing bad to say today, for once:
WADA chief Dick Pound smirked at Theodore's alibi.
"It's amazing how many athletes around the world appear to be worried about losing their hair," he told the Star's Jim Byers in Turin last night.
Let's say for a moment that Dick's been right all along — that a third of NHL players are doping, and that we're all hopelessly naive shills for believing otherwise. Does his smirking, told-ya-so attitude help him prove it, especially in the case of a guy like Jose Theodore, who isn't exactly of gargantuan proportions, who presumably has a doctor willing to testify to the effect that he's been prescribing the Canadiens' #2 goalie Propecia for some time now?
Funnily enough, I think it does the opposite. It shifts the focus from Theodore onto Pound, who is a uniquely pugnacious media whore. As his attitude becomes ever more smug and ever less professional, I find that not only do I not believe what he's telling me, I don't want to believe what he's telling me. Not just because I hope 33% of NHL players aren't doping, but because they guy telling me is quite obviously a dick.
Well, maybe I will take issue with one thing Cox said:
But Gretzky is perhaps Canada's most famous living person, and he has long embraced the role of an ambassador for the sport he has loved since he could walk.
Thus, his involvement in this rather shabby business, peripheral as it may prove to be, will nonetheless be a huge disappointment to many Canadians.
This strikes me as rubbish, but if any of those disappointed Canadians are reading this right now, please explain your condition in the comments (bearing in mind that all Gretzky's been accused of thus far is (a) having a wife with a rather flamboyant gambling habit, (b) finding out — very recently, for all we know — that Rick Tocchet was running a gambling racket, and (c) trying to find out if there was anything he could do to protect his wife).
A little over a year ago Prince Harry turned up to a natives and colonials party dressed as a German soldier, and the British tabloids basically self-immolated in indignation. Simon Jenkins wrote a beautiful eulogy for the whole affair in the Times, and one passage seems particulary relevant here:
We have lost the ability to express proportion. There is no longer such a thing as an accident. There is only a catastrophe. Whatever happens is "big news", unless something else turns up that is bigger. Someone somewhere… must be involved, be blamed and, with luck, be sued or sacked. Public figures no longer make mistakes. They make "massive errors of judgment" for which they must resign or be roasted alive. This is almost medieval. However minor, and however sincerely regretted, a mistake may be redeemed only with trial by ordeal.
And that's for people who have admitted their mistake. Mr Gretzky hasn't even been accused of making one. The mere suggestion that he should not go to Turin with the Olympic team is a wildly disproportionate response, with the fecal stench of Canadian self-loathing about it to boot.
Postscript
Bob Mackenzie uncloaks the elephant in the room:
Gretzky's name being mentioned amidst this mess is undoubtedly salacious stuff – a lightning rod for outrage in some quarters – but does anyone else find it odd how little attention is paid to the fact that one of the three individuals facing the most serious charges is himself a New Jersey State trooper? If you didn't know better, you would think the New Jersey State Police would like it that way.
Thank you. Aren't law enforcement types supposed to get upset when elements of their investigations — wiretap details, for instance — are leaked?
(Cross-posted to the Shotgun.)
Posted by Chris Selley at February 11, 2006 01:02 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.tartcider.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/287