Crash: Lance Armstrong Emerges As Unlikable Liar Under Oprah Winfrey’s Prodding
Philly.com
Oprah Winfrey didn’t pussyfoot around.
She got Lance Armstrong to confess in the first minute.
It was a curiously unemotional moment, the prosecutor leading the witness through what seemed like well-rehearsed paces in a businesslike fashion.
Armstrong said he was sorry for all the years of lying, but he sounded like he was reading a shopping list. He may have been wearing a lavender shirt that complemented Oprah’s violet dress, but the disgraced cycling champion was anything but colorful.
On her cable channel Thursday night, Winfrey wisely began with a series of yes-or-no questions that brought a decade of deception to an end.
Did Armstrong take banned substances? Yes. EPO? Yes. Blood transfusions? Yes. In winning all seven Tour de France titles? Yes.
If you changed the channel then, you didn’t miss much.
It was the most eagerly anticipated interview since Monica Lewinsky sat down with Barbara Walters (except there was no sex, lies and audiotape, just lies).
But the event had an anticlimactic feel. First came the leak (to the New York Times) that Armstrong was considering coming clean. Then came the leak (to USA Today) that he planned to confess to Oprah. Then came the leak (to the AP) that he had in fact told Oprah he’d been a doper. So all that remained to be seen were what words Armstrong would use and what demeanor he would display.
He just didn’t seem contrite. “You brazenly and deliberately denied everything you’ve just admitted to me,” Winfrey said. No dispute. “You called other people liars.” True. Armstrong didn’t so much engage in the interview as endure it.
Read more at CNN.com
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