Good (news) Friday: ???…

Dear readers:

With so much bad news in the world today, I fear seeming Pollyannaish by scavenging the globe to find something worthy of my Good (news) Friday feature. But, truth be told, I’m just in no shape today to share good news. And here’s why:

Given my indignation over the attempts to scapegoat Barry Bonds for the steroids problem in Baseball (a problem, as you’ll see below, not unique to it), I intended to hail his reprieve as today’s good news – after a grand jury refused last week to indict him on trumped up charges relating to his alleged use of steroids.

But with yesterday’s breaking news about Tour de France champion Floyd Landis, praising Bonds now would be tantamount to ignoring the proverbial pink elephant cycling a stationary bike in the middle of the room.

Moreover, I’m still suffering too much indigestion from all the humble pie my friends (mostly French) forced down my throat yesterday after news broke that Landis fueled his broken hip to victory, not on the natural American power I extolled with such vicarious jingoism, but on synthetic steroids! (He tested positive for unusually high testosterone levels….)

I feel like I’ve been Punk’d, which, I suppose, makes my pink Pepto Bismol an appropriate palliative.

But here’s my take on this profoundly disappointing news:

In hindsight, everyone is asserting that there had to be something fishy (or dopey) about the way Landis recovered (like Lazarus resurrected), in one 24-hour period, to cycle to victory in the grueling stage 17 of the race, when defeat seemed all but certain. At the time, however, all of the commentators (including Lance Armstrong hater, Greg Lemond) were frothing at the mouth about how Landis’s performance in this stage was the “greatest single day of racing by any cyclist in the history of the Tour de France.”

But I think, because we’re all so starved for a bona fide hero these days, it was just too irresistible not to prop up this broken-hip, goofy-looking guy on a pedestal. Unfortunately, it now seems that it was all too good to be true. And, Landis stands to be the first champion ever to be stripped of his title for cheating….

NOTE: Landis’s own team, Phonak, has already presumed him guilty by suspending him, pending further investigation. But, after everything Lance Armstrong went through with French anti-doping authorities and their suspect testing procedures, I’m not willing to accept these preliminary results as definitive. (The tests on Landis’s samples were conducted by France’s national anti-doping laboratory at Chatenay-Malabry.)

Therefore, I shall suspend wallowing in disappointment, pending a second round of tests next week….

In the interim, however, I invite my friends to revel in schadenfreude at my expense. And, since there’s a little more room in my INBOX, please feel free to keep sending the humble pies.

ENDNOTE: How’s this for a more uplifting story: My fellow islanders down in Trinidad and Tobago are reeling in controversy over the attempt by their chief justice to influence the outcome of a corruption trial of one of their former prime ministers…. Click here for my CNN commentary on why this unfolding national crisis is not as bad as it seems.

Floyd Landis, Tour de France, doping testosterone