THE JANUARY 2013 DOUCHEY MCDOUCHE BAG AWARD

 

For those of you reading our monthly Douchey McDouche Bag post for the first time, welcome and let me tell you why you are here.

Each month we bring attention to the media’s biggest loser, a real self-absorbed a-hole, who does the wrong thing, but is actually so selfish they are incapable caring about how their actions impact those around them.

January’s Douchey McDouche Bag Award goes to a set of folks who wouldn’t know the truth if it was shot at them from an assault rifle.

Yep, we’re shouting out Lance Armstrong, Ronaiah Tuiasosopo, Manti Te’o – who used the first month of 2013 to lie and deceive their way into our hearts and rogue’s gallery.

A Cycle of Lies

The year started innocently enough, but when Oprah Winfrey announced she was planning to interview Lance Armstrong and he was planning to make a big announcement.

Afterall, Armstrong had been out of the sport for about two years and had conveniently dropped off of our collective radar screen.

So who could have guessed that Mr. Tour de France, Mr. Livestrong, the face of American professional cycling, would have finally decided to admit what many in sports had been saying for years – he’s a doper?

Now I hate liars.

But this betraying-assed douche bag lied and lied and lied his way through a legendary cycling career that spanned 20 years and actually made all of us care about a sport that we all knew little about and had largely relegated to sunny Sunday’s on some paved, scenic, park path – what a douche!

But making us care about cycling wasn’t enough for Lance, the douchebag, no, no, he had to milk it and violate everyone. He won every possible award he could Olympic gold, the Tour de France and even married Sheryl Crow during his egomaniacal jaunt down Fibber’s Lane.

Then he summoned up the remainder of everyone’s sympathy.

 He beat testicular cancer and   created the Livestrong foundation, which compelled everyone to wear those goofy, yellow, rubber bracelets in support of his triumph over the disease. All this while he had already alienated friends, other cyclists and used our American hubris to doubt any and every one questioning “our guy.”

Most of us questioned what type of sour grapes France was collectively eating and shook our collective fingers of shame at anyone who would go after our champion, who just happened to get even better at cycling as he got older and lost a testicle – nuts!

However, all of Armstrong’s accomplishments on the bicycle track paled in comparison with his best talent – lying.

Armstrong confirmed his talent for telling tall tales during a Jan. 14, 2013 interview with Oprah, when he admitted to lying and doping so much that it was like breathing.

Tears were shed, while shame and remorse were on a parade for good ol’ Lance, who also was the target of a Federal investigation and our curiosity. Like a driver who got cut-off on the interstate, I wondered aloud: “What type of self-absorbed, sociopath was capable of pulling off such an unimaginable maneuver?”

So, I had to pull up alongside him and get a good look at the a-hole.

Last October the United States Anti-Doping Agency produced a 200-page report that outlined Armstrong’s use of PED and blood transfusions throughout his career that found an organized doping scheme by the formerly glorious United States Parcel team, which won seven Tour de France titles from 1999 to 2005.

Such a douchey move was only trumped by the litany of denials by Armstrong over the years and the various lawsuits he filed against anyone who accused him of doping.

In 2004 a Texas-based company withheld a $5 million bonus from Armstrong after a French book alleged he’d been cheating. Armstrong won the suit and managed an agreement with the firm, which ultimately paid him somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million after the allegations.

However, the worst example of douchey prowes came in a 2005 lawsuit against his former teammate and close personal friends Frankie and Betsy Andreu.

The Andreu’s testified in 1996, she and her husband heard the former cycling champion tell a doctor about his doping, while he was being treated for cancer. The sworn testimony was part of a lawsuit Lance and his supporters filed over the withheld bonus due him for winning the Tour de France.

Following the testimony, all cycling related work dried up for the Andreu’s who were once in Armstrong’s inner circle. In fact, Armstrong vilified the couple and famously referred to Betsy Andreu as: “a crazed nut job.”

Before the Winfrey interview, Armstrong said he called Andreu, but refused to give specifics about the conversation.   He described his treatment of the Andreu’s as well as other accusers as “people that got run over, got bullied.”

At the end of the day, the pouty-faced Armstrong on Oprah’s set seems to be holding his ground among falling endorsements and the evaporation of public trust.

In a normal month, Armstrong would have earned our top award all by his got damney, but this was no normal month. It was “January 2013 – Month of the Liar,” so put your boots on.

A Liar’s Luau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we were all digesting the coming out party for the Fibber King Lance Armstrong, another filthy liar emerged on the scene.

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Heisman Trophy hopeful Manti Te’o, fresh off an absolute ass whopping in the BCS National Championship game opened up another can of worms when he admitted he too lied.

No, not about his undefeated Fightin’ Irish having a shot in the championship game and losing 42-14. Not even about the historical blip that ranked Notre Dame as the number 1 college team in the country at the time they were crushed by the Crimson Tide.

Nope, Te’o divulged that his one and only true love, known to the public as Lennay Kekua, was not dead, had never actually existed and was in fact a dude.

In case you’ve been hiding in your fully stocked bunker or something, Te’o is the captain of the Notre Dame college football team and it’s starting Middle Linebacker. An immense talent, Te’o tackled his way to the top by eating quarterbacks, and anyone else who crossed his path, en-route to a shot at the top collegiate football award in the nation.

However, things got kind of out of hand last year, when information about Te’o’s romantic relationship with an alleged cancer-stricken Stanford co-ed got out and captured the media’s fancy.

While in the middle of a quest for a spot in the BCS Championship game, the media thrust the relationship between Te’o, an obviously sheltered, Mormon from Hawaii and his true love, Kekua into the national spotlight.

News of the “relationship” went public on Sept. 11, 2012 when Te’o lost his grandmother. A day later Te’o said he was contacted by someone who described himself as his beautiful girlfriend’s brother, and was informed that the woman he’d been dating for three years had succumbed to her illness on the same day as his grandmother – what a coincidence!

The story took on a life of its own, which was pretty impossible being that, unbeknownst to the public, Kekua didn’t really exist.

Once the media got a hold of the dead girlfriend story, the Heisman hopeful was almost canonized for his unconditional love and acts of bravery in the face of losing both his Nana and knockout girlfriend on the same day.

On Sept. 15^th Notre Dame played Michigan State and Te’o had a monster game, recording 12 tackles and made mention of his inspiration for his unreal effort.

With Kekua’s funeral set for the next week against the equally legendary Michigan Wolverines, Te’o made a promise to his dead lover that he’d carry on and just keep playing kick-ass football.

After the win over Michigan, Te’o and the surging Fighting Irish went on to amass a perfect 12-0 regular season. In the middle of all of the glory was Te’o, the team captain, what a story!

Actually, part of it was a really tall tale.

Following the drubbing by Alabama in the BCS Bowl, things started to smell.

 An article published by website Deadspin.com on Jan. 16, 2013 wondered aloud whether Te’o had fabricated the entire death of his girlfriend for Heisman consideration. The story cited a source that questioned whether the supposedly dead Kekua ever dated Te’o or existed.

The sports media watched in horror as its perfectly crafted story slowly began to unravel.

The mysterious Kekua seemed to rise from the dead and had been seen around the Hawaiian islands.  The public later learned the photo on the Lennay Kekua Facebook page was actually the photo of a California woman named Diane O’Meara.

 O’Meara, who attended High School with a man named Ron Tuiasosopo said she consented to a photo that was supposed to be for his cousin, but said her former classmate stole other pictures of her from her Facebook page to entice Te’o.

O’Meara called Te’o back in December of 2012 and told him she was not dead or named Kekau for that matter.

But here’s where Manti cracked his bottle of vinegar and water.

 

He told school officials about the possible hoax, but continued to refer to his alleged dead girlfriend in interviews.

However, that was old hat by December 2012. In fact, Te’o had already fabricated meeting the fictional Kekua , something he later said was done to appease his curious father.

As the controversy simmered and the public began to openly question Te’o, he followed the Lance Armstrong blueprint and went on television for a big weepy, tell-all.

Te’o proclaimed his innocence to Katie Couric, stating he was not involved in the hoax, but instead a victim of catfish scam, despite a few lies and deceptions. Afterall, he only “tailored” the story a little so people wouldn’t think he was an out and out liar – is that so wrong?

It also appears the person  Te’o dated for nearly four years, was not the woman who was the subject of a phony Facebook page, but instead her male classmate – Ron Tuiasosopo. As it turns out Te’o had only dated the love of his life on Facebook, Twitter, the internet and on the telephone.

Where Notre Dame cleared its golden boy of any wrongdoing, the next phase of this deliciously douchey tale came from the perpetuator of the hoax himself – Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.

Easily the biggest douche in our funky story, Tuiasosopo apologized for carrying out the whole hoax for almost four years, but gave little by way of a reason.

Oh no. Tuiasosopo, an internet whore, who is described as an actor/director on his Facebook page and has videotaped himself singing Christian songs online, was not going to go away until he got his 15-minutes of fame.

First he was on network television, then he got his close-up on Dr. Phil’s show, where he admitted to falling in love with Te’o, then almost admitting to being gay and then just to being confused.

For a day or two, this nobody became a media reality star, by reconstructing the female voice he used to lure the football star and ultimately divulging that he had been repeatedly molested by a family friend since he was 12-years-old.

He said creating the fictional “Lennay “was a coping mechanism that helped him live in an alternate universe.

Um, I got it.

During the whole ordeal, we were all put in an alternate universe that made me hate Hawaii for the first time in my life. At the end of the day, we all felt violated and dirty. I think we all needed a collective douche.

So in a month full-o-lies, our two douches stood out as the most mendacious story tellers and we didn’t even have to watch the Beyonce inaugural lip-sync to draw our conclusion.

From Armstrong living wrong to Ronny Tuiasosopo’s imitating a female, our liars are the ones with their pants on fire and the ones who grabbed up our coveted monthly prize for their ability to brutally assault the truth with the help of an all too willing media.

Now off you go, you filthy fibbers – you just won the Boom Bap Radio Douchey McDouche Bag Award for the month of January 2013.