From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times:
As much as fans want to believe Lance Armstrong, who denied a report this week in a French newspaper that he’d used a banned substance before winning his first Tour de France, they may have doubts, thanks to a troubling theme resonating through the world of sports.
“It should fill us with righteous anger when a French newspaper calls Lance Armstrong, bona fide American hero, a cheater,” writes Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer. “[But] the sad truth is that we can’t get angry for Armstrong because we simply can’t trust anyone anymore. We’ve heard every sort of excuse. … We’ve watched superstars lie to Congress. We’ve heard all the carefully worded alibis and explanations”.
“If we can’t simply accept Armstrong’s word, blame Marion Jones and Rafael Palmeiro and Bill Romanowski and Kelli White and Jason Giambi and Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds.”
The trouble with trying to believe Armstrong, Sheridan concludes, “is that everything he’s saying, we’ve heard before.”