Spitting Is Part Of The Metaphor
CREDIT: © AFP & VeloNews/VeloNews.com
WHERE: L'Alpe d'Huez, France. WHAT: the noble sport of bicycle racing.
MAP: L'Alpe d'Huez [FLASH: click No.16] Thumbnails [1][2] pop-up larger images.

We can contain ourselves no longer! Today we were impelled to bring you pictures from the Tour de France. The metaphor for life that plays out at Le Tour ran from the lows to the highs, literally and metaphorically, all in the space of forty minutes. Lance Armstrong (left) and Jan Ullrich (right) battled it out on bicycles up a mountain course against the clock. Armstrong was faster. Ullrich came second. In sporting terms it was a magnificent dead heat.

There are some people who cannot take this kind of high level competition, imagining in some deranged way that their negative attitudes bring something to the party. The commentators were in denial about the clearly audible booing. The cameras cut away quickly from obscenities painted on the road, jeering, or taunting. Race director Jean-Marie Leblanc was more circumspect as quoted in VeloNews, and acknowledged the bad behavior, which included spitting.

Nothing could spoil the triumph: not the triumph of any one individual, but of the nobility of every man who climbed that mountain. Allowing the spitters to spoil the event would be an ignominious defeat for all us, including the spitters.

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