Marion Jones - an American Tragedy
This is what makes this story such a tragedy. I do not believe that this young woman is a bad person. She simply did something that she should not have done and when she was confronted, she lied. I cannot say what was going through her mind at the time. However, I do tend to believe that there was fear, shame and embarrassment present in her thought process.
I do feel sympathy for her plight though because I heard her apology and it seemed sincere enough and she professed remorse and accepted all blame for her actions. This alone takes an extraordinary amount of courage. I do realize that there are those which do not feel the sympathy that I do for Ms. Jones, but I just can not jump on the bandwagon in this case.
The unfortunate thing of the whole circumstance is that those children which were inspired by her have now had another hero in their lives removed from the pedestal that they placed them on. I know that we should not really look toward anyone else as a hero, but in the eyes of a child it will always be the case.
I believe that people are mostly angry and disappointed with her because she deceived so many and denied all allegations until it was clear that she could hide it no more. Another troubling thought is that it also cast a very poor light on American athletes in the eyes of the world. I can foresee that future American Olympiads will face much tougher scrutiny than ever before.
Now, it seems as though Marion Jones will be stripped of all of her Olympic medals. It is sad, but it is fair I suppose. I just pray that something positive comes out of all of this and the issue of steroid use can finally be tackled.
Sources
Website: Associated Press
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jJGPr2B63w9T3bwU0HrxPF5aU8SwD8S3UTDO0
Published by Nicholos Poma B.S.
Nick Poma holds a Bachelor of Science and Information Technology degree. He has served in the United States armed forces as a 31U, Tactical Communications Specialist, from 1983 to 1989 and then again from 20... View profile
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2 Comments
Post a CommentEven tho this young women made a terrible mistake and compounded it by persistent lying, I have a tremendous amount of respect for her based on the apology she made the other day. No reading from a written statement, no blaming anyone else, no justifying what she'd done. Sure too bad some of our politicians aren't able to see the example this young woman has set for all of us who, at one time or another, made serious mistakes and had to come fact-to-face with our character. May God Bless her!!
Something positive will come. It may be in her personal life. It is really a sad story. The greater story that is a travesty is the extent to which steroids reach into society, all the way down to high school sports. It points to the larger picture that society has turned priorities up-side down. (As it was in the days of Noah...)