Lance Armstrong Sorry for Having so Many Millions?

Lance Armstrong appeared with Oprah last night, the first part of a two-part confession special, to publicly admit to taking the performance enhancing drugs he has not just denied using, but vehemently, ruthlessly denied using, denigrating and bullying and seeking to destroy the far less powerful people who have told nothing but the truth about his habits. Armstrong picked Oprah to conduct this interview — as opposed to some sports journalist, or Barbara Walters, or Brian Williams or any of the other possible choices — because she alone confers on public screw-ups the sense that just by speaking to her they are beginning the long road back to acceptability. Oprah is a journalist, as she ably demonstrated last night, but she also occupies a particular space, that of celebrity confessor in chief, our national moral proxy, the woman empowered to find her subjects wanting or sufficiently remorseful, the person who accepts tears but not excuses, holds her subjects to the facts and, more important, the feelings. Unfortunately for Lance Armstrong, he does not appear to have enough of those.

The interview began with seven very effective yes or no questions, getting the central truths, the truths Armstrong has denied for so long, out of the way in a brutal incantation: Did you ever take banned substances to enhances your cycling performance?  Yes. EPO? Yes. Blood doping? Yes? Testosterone, Cortisone, Human Growth Hormone? Yes. Was he doping for all seven of his Tour De France victories? Yes.