Lance Armstrong and the uses of enchantment

Macur misses her own point. Armstrong didn’t need to fake sincerity—and why should she have wanted him to? He offered Oprah real sincerity, the red-blooded sincerity of the unrepentant. What he displayed is so old-fashioned we’ve forgotten there’s a word for it: genuine attrition—which is sorrow for sin strictly out of fear of being damned. It used to be fashionable among aging kings and prelates who in their salad days lived by Augustine‘s famous prayer, “Lord, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

Armstrong was a liar who’d doubly damn himself by turning into a phony. The headline to Macur’s story on Armstrong was “On a Big Stage, a Tired Act,” so I wonder if she realizes she wrote a tribute to him.

Article Appeared @http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2014/01/02/lance-armstrong-and-the-uses-of-enchantment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *