SEEMS TO BE THE EASIEST WORD: James Poniewozik,
on tonight's spectacle aimed at getting all of us to figure out where OWN is on our digital cable systems:
[N]othing I could imagine Armstrong saying, meets any non-laughable moral definition of “sorry.” Sorry is not a famous, powerful man deciding belatedly to do the right thing in order to limit his losses.
...At some point in the history of these confessional interviews–Charlie Sheen, James Frey, and on and on back into the mists of disgrace–we’ve decided that the main purpose of these sitdown talks is the public display of contrition. You can blame the media in part, for selling high-profile interviews like this as primetime tearjerking personal dramas, and the interviewees and their consultants, for using this dynamic to their advantage.
So the interview becomes a performance. Did he turn things around? Did he seem sincere? Did he start to rehabilitate his image? Let’s ask a body-language expert!
But when we frame the sleazebag-apologia interview as mainly a p.r. exercise in showing remorse and winning redemption, the sleazebag has already won. Because it puts the interview on the friendlier, subjective ground of emotion and performance, which can be finessed and spun. It becomes like landing a difficult triple axel: if he pulls it off, it’s a success.
I'm not going to bother watching. As I've said here before:
As I suggested a few years back, to me there is a threshold of philanthropy which excuses just about any sin in one's professional life, and Armstrong (like Jerry Lewis) assuredly has passed it for me. If he doped in a sport in which everyone was doping, it's not something about which I feel terribly worked up. Just don't let him host SNL again.
