I love the picture!
Thank you for picking out specific examples. These are exactly the sorts of things that I meant to write lightheartedly, and not to pass judgment on the officials. At the time (not now), something struck me as comical about the French authorities going through the Tour trash. Not that I thought that it was frivolous, but it just struck me as something that would happen on a cartoon. The original writing was meant to evoke this picture of the poor French officials up against this huge PR monolith that is Lance Armstrong. The job of anti-doping officials is very important, but there is something a bit ironic about the indignity of going through trash and collecting urine to achieve this higher purpose. The road runner thing was more on the cartoon character theme. I actually sat there and thought and thought for a very long time for a better metaphor where the French weren't the "bad guy," but I couldn't come up with one. In the end, I didn't think that anyone would read much into it. Obviously, it wasn't taken how I expected, and my own semantics were to blame for this whole controversy. Unfortunately, at the Examiner we don't have the luxury of editors to tell us when our writing doesn't come off as brilliant as we thought (thanks for the editorial tip, by the way!). I was tempted to go through and do some heavy edits to the original article before re-posting it to clear up the ambiguity in my wording, but in the end that would have taken away from what we were arguing about to begin with, right?
In the end, when you're a writer some things come out the way you expect them to, and some things fly right over people's heads. Unfortunately the "Lance" article was a case of the latter. When emotions run high (especially around the holidays when everyone's patience wears thin), it can be hard to keep an objective eye in the face of criticism. Live and learn, but I appreciate those who take the time to consider my newer editorial on the topic. I hope it stands as a positive example as "Integrity in Cycling Journalism."