Yes! Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler lances Lance’s boil. The Oprah-forced “deeply flawed, arrogant bully“ shed no tears, showed no emotion, talked in the third person. “Tentative and anxious at times.” WSJ.
Christine Brennan USA Today: At what arguably should have been the most intense, emotional, gut-wrenching moment in his life, Armstrong found time to be glib. Gallows humor, perhaps? Or, more likely, just one cold-blooded customer.
If it was possible to like Lance Armstrong even less, his 90-minute interview with Winfrey on Thursday night went a long way to accomplishing that fact. If he was hoping to win over some supporters in the court of public opinion while trying to return to some semblance of public life less than three months after being officially banned and stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, it’s hard to imagine how he might have accomplished that.
He was even more unlikable than one might have imagined. He was smug. He was curt. He was cold and unfeeling. And he doesn’t yet seem to get what he’s in for if he ever wants to even consider having a chance to come back to compete someday in age-group triathlons and marathons.
One comment seemed to say it all: Asked about how he tried to ruin the image of his former masseuse, Emma O’Reilly, Armstrong said that she “got run over.”
The way he said it, it was as if somebody else did it.
But he did it.
Clearly, the words, “I ran her over” were not in Armstrong’s vocabulary. He comes to a mea culpa sit-down with Oprah, and he can’t even say that right?
He also said he sued so many people, he didn’t even remember suing her. It was a truly telling admission.
“It’s a major flaw,” he admitted matter-of-factly, “and it’s a guy who expected to get whatever he wanted and control every outcome, and it’s inexcusable.”
Finally, a few words from Armstrong that made sense.
NYP: Armstrong refused to say whether a teammate’s former wife, Betsy Andreu, was right when she claimed that she heard him list the steroids he was taking to an Indiana doctor treating him for cancer in 1996.
“It was a confidential, personal conversation,” he replied.
“They’ve been hurt too badly,” he said, when asked if they had made peace. “I did call her crazy. I think she’d be OK with me saying this . . . I said, ‘I called you crazy, I called you a bitch, but I never called you fat.’ ”
Related: NYDN
Update 1: Thursday’s episode entices 4.3 mil pairs of eyeballs. Brian Stelter NYT.
Update 2: Friday’s episode “at times seemed more like a therapy session than an inquisition. NYT.