Dear Floyd (cont.):By now you are asking yourself: WWMRQED*?
The solution is simple: ADMIT YOUR GUILT.
Repeat after me: I did it. I, Floyd Landis, am guilty.
But Millionaire Richard Quick, Esq.! you exclaim. I'm innocent!
Floyd, baby, I could care less. Innocence, guilt... it's irrelevant. What counts, son, is the STORY. So follow along with me here, and try to pay attention. Here, take one of these if you're getting drowsy.
No one except your mother (and she has her doubts) will ever believe you 100%. You will always be tainted goods unless you confess. after your suspension, you’ll be relegated to morally indifferent or low budget sponsors (How does Team Wild Bill’s Beef Jerky sound to you?)
So confess. Get everyone on the same page. During Year One you will tour the country and speak to school groups about staying off drugs, about playing fair, about always wearing a helmet while riding and the importance of eating vegetables. You will come out with a book in which you claim that getting caught was the best thing that ever happened because you had become so obsessed with winning that you had lost yourself, your soul and your faith in the process. Oprah will publish it and make you a regular guest. You’ll do interviews on Good Morning America, the 700 Club, and you’ll be the self-deprecating guest-host of Saturday Night Live. You will credit God and family and America for giving you a second chance.
In your book you will admit that you started experimenting with performance enhancement when you were a boy in Lancaster County. You remember an Amish dealer feeding you performance-enhancing whoopie pies that enabled you to bring his crops in three months early AND make 125 shoofly pies in a single weekend. Your addiction escalated from there.
Year Two you will train by bicycling in your home state of Pennsylvania, where Governor Ed Rendell will change the state slogan to read: “Pennsylvania. Now Steroid-Free!” The Pennsylvania Dutch Visitor & Convention Bureau will blow their entire year’s ad budget to become a sponsor. Sponsors will line up to be part of your historic drug-free comeback. We’ll run an ad campaign in which you promise the only performance enhancing substances in your system are Lancaster County Shoo-Fly Pie, Wheaties, Gatorade, NutriGrain bars and [insert more big dollar sponsor names here].
Your Tour De France comeback win will be glorious, meaningful and the most lucrative in history. You will be the most visible and sought-after company spokesman ever, a born-again health advocate and spokesperson for the cause of good old-fashioned Honesty. Your books will outsell Dr. Phil’s. Your story miraculous comeback will make Lance Armstrong's story yesterday's news... and you won't even have to lose a single testicle in the process.
Years from now, when ready to retire from cycling, you will release your memoirs in which you admit that the whole thing was a hoax, that you never used steroids or performance-enhancing drugs at all, but that no one would believe you. Your memoirs will be the best-selling book of all time and you will be on talk show after talk show, telling how you lied to tell the truth, how you sacrificed your good name to spread a positive message. The media won’t be too hard on you for your deception because, after all, the plan was there in plain sight from the beginning, published as “An Open Letter to Floyd Landis from Millionaire Richard Quick,” but no one had bothered to pay attention.
So call me, Floyd, and we’ll get the wheels turning on your amazing comeback! Of course, there will be some contractual obligations that you must make to me and some of my QuickCo Companies, but you can trust me that I am looking out for your best interest.
See you on the veranda!,
Richard Quick, Esq.
Chairman & CEO
Quick Public Relations Group,
Home of the QuickSpin™ Publicity Management System
*What Would Millionaire Richard Quick, Esq. Do?
Image of Floyd Landis above is courtesy of the Floyd Landis is the Man blog, where you'll find other cool Floyd Landis images that are available as T-shirts at the Floyd Landis is the Man Cafe Press site. Any and ALL proceeds from t-shirt sales will be donated to the Floyd Landis Foundation - Supporting Osteoarthritis Research and Treatment. Don't ask me why they give away their hard-earned t-shirt money... maybe they need the write-off. Not something Richard Quick would do!
2 comments:
Dear Dick,
Thanks for the comment in my blog covering the Landis affair, trust but verify. I'm sure you understand my need for a gratuitious self-referential plug.
I had already linked your first open letter, and have just done so again for this one.
I'll be unlikely to discuss strategy on your site - mine is probably a better place for that. And the AdSense on mine appears to be going to charity. As Ron Wood once famously said, "I've got my own album to do".
Best of luck in your endeavors. By the way -- Have you considered starting a religion? ElRon says thats the way to really make money.
TBV
Dear Dick,
Thanks for the comment in my blog covering the Landis affair, trust but verify. I'm sure you understand my need for a gratuitious self-referential plug.
I had already linked your first open letter, and have just done so again for this one.
I'll be unlikely to discuss strategy on your site - mine is probably a better place for that. And the AdSense on mine appears to be going to charity. As Ron Wood once famously said, "I've got my own album to do".
Best of luck in your endeavors. By the way -- Have you considered starting a religion? ElRon says thats the way to really make money.
TBV
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