Lance Armstrong

Betsy Andreu might not have collected the affirmation she sought from Lance Armstrong, but she indeed emerged vindicated from the tarnished cyclist's interview with Oprah Winfrey. “It's a relief for myself because he told the truth.… For him to get on TV and say he was a cheat and a fraud for all of his seven Tour wins, that took a hell of a lot of courage,” Andreu said. “He's broken, and that's sad.” Andreu, the wife of Armstrong's former Tour de France teammate and close friend Frankie Andreu, was a determined critic of Armstrong's for years, dating to her insistence that the couple heard Armstrong tell cancer doctors at an Indiana hospital in 1996 that he indeed had been using several performance-enhancing substances.

It's possible to see President Obama as a flip-flopper on this issue: In a New York Times story about how his first term has changed both him and his family, it's revealed that after initially saying that he wasn't interested in a presidential library, which he viewed as "a tribute to himself costing hundreds of millions of dollars," Obama has changed his mind. Maybe this is a sign of a president who is more conventional, more establishment and possibly more comfortable with the perks and honors of the job. No matter; he has come around to the right way of thinking about this.

Re "'Dear Abby' gave advice for over 40 years," Obituary, Jan. 18 As a lawyer, I had the privilege of representing "Dear Abby" columnist Pauline Friedman Phillips for many years and considered her not only a valued client but also a warm and caring friend. Phillips' wit and intelligence were legendary and she took her advisory role quite seriously. Often, before responding to a reader's inquiry, she would call upon her cadre of professionals to formulate the best constructive response.

Re "Lance Armstrong's legacy," Editorial, Jan. 18 I lost both my parents to cancer. My father died at the time the Livestrong Foundation was formed, and I've been wearing the yellow bracelet since the beginning. When it finally became apparent that Lance Armstrong had been doping, I still wore my bracelet because I was able to separate the man from the foundation. However, after reading that Armstrong's doping could have helped cause his cancer, I can't do it anymore. I recently threw away my bracelet.

“Saturday Night Live” stuck it to disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong like so many injections of performance-enhancing drugs. First, the cold opener featured Jason Sudeikis as Armstrong as a guest of Piers Morgan (played by Taran Killam), who introduced the cyclist as “The most despicable, vile human being ever to set foot on planet Earth, and I'm so happy to have him.” When Morgan mentioned Armstrong's accusers, the self-confessed bully said, “Who said that? They're liars!

The girlfriend may have been fake, but the interview will be real. Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o became a national punch line last week when the girlfriend he claimed had died tragically turned out never to have existed. Now Te'o -- who claims he was the victim of a hoax -- will try to explain the odd case to Katie Couric for the Thursday episode of her syndicated talk show "Katie. " It will be Te'o's first on-camera interview since the story broke. Jeremy Schaap of ESPN conducted a two-and-a-half hour interview with Te'o on Friday night, but there were no video cameras.

Well, that didn't take long. Paramount Pictures and J.J. Abrams are making a movie about disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong. The studio and Abrams' production company, Bad Robot, have secured the rights to author Juliet Macur's book proposal "Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong," to be published by HarperCollins. A release date for the book has not yet been set. Macur, a sports reporter for the New York Times, has covered Armstrong for more than a decade as the cyclist has made news with his cancer battle, his continuous denial of doping and his admission to Oprah Winfrey that he used illegal performance-enhancement substances throughout his career.

Like most sequels, the second part of Lance Armstrong's two-night, televised interview with Oprah Winfrey lacked the punch and fireworks of the first segment. All of the major confessions - doping and lying and bullying his accusers - were already out of the way. So, for much of Friday night's one-hour telecast, Armstrong settled in to discuss the fallout from his scandal, the ways in which it has hurt his family, cancer-fighting foundation and - to just as great an extent - his bank account.

Though we profess to hate it, lying is common, useful and pretty much universal. It is one of the most durable threads in our social fabric and an important bulwark of our self-esteem. We start lying by the age of 4 and we do it at least several times a day, researchers have found. And we get better with practice. In short, whatever you think about Lance Armstrong's admission this week that he took performance-enhancing drugs to fuel his illustrious cycling career, the lies he told may be no more persistent or outsized than yours, according to psychologists and others who study deception.