Exposures and Cover-Ups

[Guest fountainhall]

Two recent revelations about people who were virtual icons have all but destroyed their reputations. Lance Armstrong never failed a drugs test, massively increased awareness of testicular cancer and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research. He has finally been branded a doper and a cheat with what now seems massive and insurmountable evidence.

 

Jimmy Savile, an oddball unattractive pop radio presenter and manager of dance halls, rose to become one of the most loved figures in British television amongst children and adults alike. He also raised an estimated £40 million for various charities, especially children’s hospitals. This philanthropy gained him a knighthood from the Queen in 1990. Pope John Paul II awarded him a Papal knighthood in the same year.

 

Now Savile, who died a year ago, has been exposed as a serial child molester. Worse, it is known that more than a few of his colleagues were aware of rumours several decades ago and did nothing. The BBC, his main employer, even dropped an investigative TV programme about the child abuse allegations last Christmas, perhaps because it had planned a celebration special about Savile. Now another television company has aired a similar expose, and there is uproar in Britain about how this man could have escaped exposure and conviction.

 

As the dirt spills out, we learn that he was banned from visiting one hospital. At another, he was seen molesting a brain-damaged girl. At yet another, nurses told young girls to stay in bed and pretend they were asleep rather than have to chat with him and have him touching them. When a nurse discussed this with a policeman who twice reported it to his superior, he was informed: ”Jimmy Savile is an important man. He must be OK. He could not be doing anything irregular. Don’t worry about it.”

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk...-herts-19915955

 

The issue of doping in cycling seems to have been endemic within the sport for decades with the general theory “everyone else does it, so why shouldn’t I?” Not only that. There seems to have been a pledge of secrecy amongst all cyclists, so that those who attempted to expose it were blackballed and their careers ruined. Not unlike corruption, I suppose, with a few people becoming obscenely rich whilst the vast majority are stuck in relative poverty.

 

But in this day and age, for allegations about a serial child abuser going back more than 40 years to be swept under the carpet as mere rumour and hearsay, is surely a huge stain on a nation’s character. It is also a black mark for journalism. On CNN a couple of night’s ago, a former cycling correspondent admitted he had heard all the rumours. But if you covered cycling, you had to have interviews with Armstrong and his team. If you dared even hint of proof of drug use, you would be banned from all further interviews. Similarly I guess with Savile. The conspiracy of silence spread to the very organs which we would normally expect to expose such misdeeds.

 

Clearly spotting all the red flags and connecting the dots is one thing. Actually doing something about it is quite another.

[Rogie]

This year's winner of ther Tour de France, the cyclist Bradley Wiggins has said recently that basically "there but for the grace of God go I" and admits the pressure within the cycling fraternity to do as everyone does is immense. So if your team is doing drugs, you either have to join in or 'get thee to a monastery'. Wiggins was grateful that the British team, of which he was a member, hadn't gone down the performance-enhancing drugs route.

 

Plenty of people have weighed in on the Jimmy Savile saga. I don't have anything original to add, except perhaps to speculate why he behaved as he is alleged to have done. By all accounts he cynically exploited the innocence and naivety of young girls, there was no love, no attempt even to make an effort to give the girl at least a fleeting sense that he cared for her. No, if ever somebody fitted the expression "wham bam, thank you ma'am" (or more like, " . . . thank you Miss") it was Savile. It fitted him like a glove. Why should be have been so single-mindedly coarse? I suspect there must have been some childhood trauma in his life, abused by a relative or maybe a bit later on his heart was broken by a girl. He became a wrestler. He seems to have developed a hatred of women. Maybe he was a misogynist.

 

Savile was a real contradiction: outwardly he was a bundle of laughs, kids loved him, a terrific ambassador for charitable causes. Inwardly he was cold, ice cold. Ice cold and scheming.

[kokopelli]

Lance Armstrong never failed a drugs test, massively increased awareness of testicular cancer and raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer research. He has finally been branded a doper and a cheat with what now seems massive and insurmountable evidence.

 

Lance sure had balls to pull that off for so long; oops did I say that?