Jesus Floyd, stop talking

Floyd Landis recently gave an interview to Velonews. It didn't go well. I'm going to handle it in bits, because reading it makes my head hurt.

First up, Floyd talking about Tyler Hamilton:

(Landis speaking): Let's look at Tyler Hamilton. You can think what you want about Tyler. But it's irrelevant at this point. He's served his suspension. People who are released from prison because of armed robbery after three years are not prevented from ever living as a human being again. They've served their time; let's give them a chance, right? I'm not saying he is guilty or innocent, I don't know. All I'm saying is he served his time. There is no reason for everyone to say Michael Ball is somehow condoning doping because he wants to hire Tyler Hamilton. Tyler has a legitimate license...I can see it from the same point of view as everyone else. But if you want to create a punishment of some kind for lying, then create a punishment for lying. But right now what you have is a system where, if a person is convicted, they get a suspension of a defined amount of time. There's nothing that says we're going to treat you like shit afterwards if you don't admit to it, and if you do admit to it, you're fine. If you want to add that to the rules, add it to the rules. But if you don't add it to the rules... it just leaves people completely in limbo.

I'm not even sure how to begin unpacking this. Let's start with "ever living as a human being again". I'm not aware of too many CFO's who, after serving time for embezzlement, go back to their former jobs. Hamilton doesn't have a right to race bicycles and nobody is saying he can't work at all. Teams, understandably, may be a bit shy about hiring a guy who is still maintaining that he did nothing wrong even after he's come up positive and continues to be associated with some of the larger doping scandals in Europe. To not understand why teams wouldn't hire Hamilton today, and why it's such a big deal that Ball did, is to not understand the business and the current state of cycling. And the ridiculous hyperbole about being treated like a sub-human reminds me of Vino's infamous comment that being asked to provide blood for doping controls was a violation of his human rights. But the Landis riff on Hamilton did lead to this classic exchange (remember, Landis introduced Hamilton into the conversation):

[Velonews]: Who specifically is treating Tyler like shit? Are you referring to the UCI, USA Cycling, or the media...?
FL: I don't know. Look, I don't mean to point out Tyler in this whole thing. It's not just Tyler.

Anyone finding Floyd's straw man, please return it to him. BTW, why doesn't the media ask this same follow-up question to sitting or potential US presidents?

Hold your nose and read the whole thing if you can. I'll be posting some other topic from the interview as my stomach settles.