LIEstrong

Society loves its heroes. We’ll take a random person, place them on a pedestal because of some arbitrary achievement, and hold them up as an example of what we should all strive to be in our daily lives. Our heroes come from all walks of life, and some are well deserving of our adulation. The big problem in our culture is that we’ve made a habit of deifying those from the sports and entertainment world.

You star in a popular TV show, and suddenly you’re a shining example for humanity. You have a song that makes it to the top of the pop charts and you’re on the request list to visit and inspire sick kids at the hospital. You’re a star athlete and you have the masses crowing for your face to be chiseled on the side of a mountain.  Heck, you could have no identifiable talent at all and still be worshipped by us, the great unwashed masses. Does the name Kim Kardashian ring a bell?

Yes sir, people sure do love a hero.

Oddly enough, the only thing we seem to love more than building up our idols is tearing them down to rubble. The ones we hold in such high esteem are quickly dragged back down to earth as we kick dirt on them and cry foul about how they have so terribly disappointed us.

If you want an example of how fickle we can be, look no further than Mr. Tour de France, Lance Armstrong. Unless you’ve been in a cave for the last 2 weeks and had no exposure to media of any kind, you know that Mr. Armstrong has been publicly crucified for ‘cheating’ during all seven of his Tour de France wins. There have been Oprah interviews, shocking exposes, and analyses on every genre of TV program known to man. Everyone you talk to seems to have an expert opinion on what he did or didn’t do, even if they previously thought Lance Armstrong was a stretchy children’s toy from the 70’s.

I have to wonder how many of the folks ripping Mr. Armstrong apart can seriously say that their lives were profoundly affected by the allegations launched toward him. I freely admit I don’t know and don’t care about the specifics of the doping accusations, and I suspect that most of those standing high on their soapbox don’t understand it either.  I personally like to imagine his blood was laced with gamma rays like the Incredible Hulk. It makes the story more interesting for me.


The funny part of the situation is that what Mr. Armstrong has admitted to is so widespread in the cycling world that in the 2010 Tour de France, every single competitor who placed in the top 10 was found guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs.  That’s not as interesting a story as ‘Super cyclist falls from grace,’ though, so it gets tossed aside.

Performance enhancing drugs or no, there’s no magic potion that can suddenly make a man able to bicycle two thousand miles across, arguably, the most demanding athletic course in the world. You have to be some sort of freakish athlete in the first place to accomplish that feat. If superhuman athleticism wasn’t a prerequisite, every middle aged guy you know would be buying a racing bike and some spandex shorts to take their shot at glory. If you want something to be outraged about, ponder that visual for a bit.

Mr. Armstrong has been vilified by a large segment of the population, but there is one key fact that seems to be missing from many folks’ tarring and feathering sermons. Since 1997, Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation has been responsible for raising over $500,000,000 for cancer research. For those of you going cross-eyed looking at all those zeros, that’s five hundred million – half a billion dollars- to combat one of the world’s biggest killers.

A survivor of testicular cancer, Mr. Armstrong served as an inspiration to other folks battling cancer of all types and showed that victims of the dreaded disease don’t have to lie down and wait to die. There’s an inarguable value there, regardless of his sports morality.

Baseball players Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez, along with mixed martial artist Vitor Belfort took performance enhancing drugs. Boxers Roy Jones Jr. and ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley hopped aboard the PED train too. Players from every major sport have been implicated in PED use and if I were to list the names of just the cyclists who have been busted in the past decade, I could fill a dozen columns of this size. The funny part is that most of the athletes implicated have been welcomed back to their respective sports with open arms, and not one of them has started a world recognized charity organization.

Mr. Armstrong admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs and lying about it. From the public outcry you would think he personally went to people’s homes and killed their dogs. We know that’s not the case, though. An NFL franchise would have offered him a lucrative quarterback contract by now if it were.

I couldn’t care less about Lance Armstrong’s cycling accomplishments and how he achieved them. What I do care about is a man who has spearheaded a movement that has done far greater things than any sport ever could.  If one hand is filled with the half billion dollars the Livestrong Foundation has raised and the other is filled with seven tainted Tour de France victories, Livestrong will win every single time.

The end truly does justify the means.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Canadian Idle!

A large percentage of the population seems to love reality television. Survivor, The Amazing Race, Big Brother, The Apprentice - you name it and it’s got an audience somewhere.  If I were to ask 100 random Metro residents what the name of last season’s American Idol winner was, I venture a large portion of them would be able to tell me.

 Now, if I were to ask them about an idle of another type, the Canadian ‘Idle No More’ movement – I’m not sure how many folks would be able to respond appropriately.

There’s a phenomenon sweeping the nation that has been punctuated by flash mobs in malls, obstructions of transportation lines, marches on Parliament Hill, and peaceful protests in our own fair city. In a society so fascinated by reality television, it’s baffling that so many are missing a slice of true reality TV playing out every night on Canadian news broadcasts.  The stakes, however, are much higher than the winner walking away with a new Escalade, a trip to the Riviera, or some cold hard cash. The entire future of our country and the way our government and our Aboriginal citizens interact with one another could change forever.

In one corner, we have the Federal government led by Stephen Harper; one of the most polarizing figures in Canadian political history. At the center of the Idle No More groundswell is Bill C-45 (now passed into law and known as the Jobs and Growth Act) which Aboriginal people assert erodes treaty rights, destroys environmental protections, and compromises Canada’s democratic process due to the way it was forced through the legislature.

In the opposing corner of this unfolding drama is Canada’s First Nations Leaders. They are trying to communicate a unified message about the Idle No More movement with the unfortunate problem of not having all their membership on the same page. Many leaders had petitioned for a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss concerns, only to have select leaders boycott the engagement at the eleventh hour unless the Governor General was present at the meeting as well.  First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo was left scrambling to save face on what should have been the organization’s finest day. The meeting occurred without much accomplished, by most accounts.

Another key participant of note is Chief Theresa Spence of the Attawapiskat Reserve in Northern Ontario. Chief Spence is, as of this writing, engaged in a hunger strike to force the Prime Minister and Governor General to meet with Aboriginal leaders about Native treaty rights. She is also working to bring attention to environmental dangers she is concerned the current government will be bringing about with their passage of the C-45 bill.  While Spence works to bring attention to these issues, many media outlets are bringing attention to the millions of dollars she has, allegedly, mishandled while many residents on her reserve live in squalor.  While being held as a beacon of inspiration for many across the country, Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal alike, her motives are being viewed by many as a smoke screen to draw attention away from her reserve’s finances.

Finally, we have the rest of the Canadian people – who seem to be divided into three separate groups on the subject.

The first group is fully in support of Idle No More and the causes that it is representing itself as fighting for. They are standing in solidarity with our Aboriginal brothers and sisters and want what they want – fairness for our Native community, our environment, and all Canadians. 

The second group is the folks who are tired of the demonstrations, tired of the rabble rousing, and feel as though the First Nations community has their hand out once again and is focusing their aggression in the wrong direction. They see the Idle No More movement as the Native community trying to wring even more privilege from our government when they should be focusing their ire on the reservation Chiefs who are mishandling the reserve coffers. They want the Native community to stop looking for what they see as handouts and to start getting their houses in order without any more government assistance.

The third group, the people I hope this piece will affect, are the ones who don’t know about Idle No More and really don’t care. It’s a politically pivotal time in Canada and Idle No More is something that promises not to go away any time soon. Even though the movement was originally launched in protest of Bill C-45, it vows to continue even after the passing of the bill into law. January 28^th has been earmarked as an ‘International Idle No More Day of Action’ with large scale protests planned, at the very minimum.

With Idle No More being a grassroots movement with no clearly identifiable leadership, the central message may or may not be getting lost. You don’t need to agree with what Idle No More professes to represent, but you should at least educate yourself on the basics of what’s happening around you. The internet can be used for more than looking for pictures of Grumpy Cat (as much as I do love him).

 It’s like my Granddad used to say, “When it hits the fan, you’ll only get half the splatter if you’re standing firmly in one place.” Pick a spot, Metro.

By the way, for those interested, last year’s American Idol was Phillip Phillips. His debut album is excellent.