Almost There

It looks more likely that Raffy was lying through his teeth after all. He apparently tested positive for stanozolol, which is not something you ingest by accident due to supplement contamination (which is, in fact, plausible in other contexts). Stanozolol use is how Ben Johnson, the sprinter from America Jr., lost his gold medal in 1988. So while still not impossible, it's extremely unlikely that Raffy's defense about contaminated supplements is actually true. Either way, I'm grateful to have more solid information. I do think he did it, but I won't go from "think" to "know" until I see more hard evidence.

Too bad the media is so unified in jumping all over the guy. Why is it that we can get dissenting viewpoints on pretty much anything out of columnists, and yet we still don't have a single "what if he's telling the truth?" column? This shameful adoption of the "presumed guilt" policy is a real nice lesson to teach the kids, isn't it? I'm also not exactly doing backflips over the insistence that if he were innocent, he would have come forward with the details of his case. Oh, so if he'd sat down for that interview with you, after you spent the last few days publicly skewering him, then he'd be less guilty? That's real principled. Which journalism school taught you to act that way?

God, I wish people cared about this stuff. Nobody gives a shit about principled reporting anymore, be they reporters, editors, or readers... everyone is more concerned about the particulars of their job than they are with their vocation. Reporters want quotes, and they want a prestigious byline. Editors want circulation/page hits to go up. Readers want something interesting to read. But nobody cares whether they're keeping true to their mission! It's about everything BUT reporting facts. (I'm obviously some kind of lunatic for thinking this, right?)