- Michael M.: Too much going on. Life in flux, etc..
- Sunshine: Wow, I was soooo happy to see a new post in my rss reader. I was hopping this is already the comeback! :(...
- gandalf: Did you only get caffeine through Dr.p or did you drink coffee as well? I’m interested, since...
- neeka: nine kilos… wow… :) happy holidays to you, michael, and to all your loved ones! veronica
- m: It was a bargain. No strings attached.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
• AlienMelon
• Burger.si
• Heck
• Izklop
• si.blogs
• Sloblogi
• Blogorola
• Natalija Verboten
Mojca Mavec and Jolanda Čeplak at the finish line.
Last week was a bad week to be a blonde celebrity in Slovenia. Two popular blondinkas — the world-class athlete Jolanda Čeplak and the beloved media personality Mojca Mavec — fell from grace. Both of them stood accused of being cheaters.
Čeplak: as the BBC reported, she tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO) and faces the possibility of missing the Beijing Olympics. Because Jolanda is a world-record-holding, Olympic-medal-wearing, all-around-ass-kicking athlete and pride of the nation, this is a deeply demoralizing prospect.
Mavec: as Dnevnik reported, she tested positive for plagiarism and has now lost her plum job as columnist for the magazine Ona. And after some hand-wringing, Marko Crnkovič also asked her to step down as a “house blogger” for Blogos.
What do the two have in common? Besides being beloved, both of them are being punished for crimes that are widespread enough to be normal. Does anyone really think that professional athletes are “clean”? Was anyone surprised by all the doped up Tour de France cyclists. I’m reminded of the words of five-time Tour winner Jacques Anquetil, who said:
“You’d have to be an imbecile or a hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants.”
That was back in 1967, where cyclists had a much smaller range of “enhancement methods” to choose from. Back then it was more or less amphetamines. Today steroids, testosterone, and EPO are all on the menu. (Speaking of which, if you want to read an absolutely incredible article about what that stuff does to you, read this: Drug Test - A Cautionary Tale. It’s about an amateur cyclist who decides to see how doping affects his performance. It’s also one of the most interesting articles I’ve ever seen on the innertubes.)
As for Mavec and the media in Slovenia: Without getting too much into it, let me just say that I agree with the many commenters at Dnevnik who wrote “She’s not the only one” or variations thereof. I mean, I know that plagiarism is a cardinal sin and that even if a lot of people are doing it doesn’t make it okay. But still… Mojca’s infractions are essentially a pimple on a body that is riddled with cancer. There are so many much more serious malfunctions going on in the Slovenian media that it just seems absurd to worry about this.
With that said, it’s still disappointing news for both of them and bad news for Slovenia.
Comments
Comments for this post are closed.
At least we don’t have George W. Bush or Berlusconi, even though Drnovsek is kinda loosing his sanity too…I changed my mind, he lost it
Way too go, Michael!!! I really tried to stay out of this, because - as you said - there are things far worse being done and said in this country.
Besides - I really do have the feeling that both girls were under attack mostly by, well, underachievers who felt that they have to kick them while they’re down.
Of course I don’t approve of their deeds - if they really did it at all, that is.
My opinion is that what MM did is unacceptable because she’s payed for writing not for copying (even though she’s certainly not the only one who copied something). But that’s about it. I don’t feel the need to rant and discuss it forever.
As for Joli, I’ll be dissatisfied if it turns out she really did it (especially because now she publicly claims she didn’t) and if it turns out she didn’t, I’ll be even more confused because more and more cases of doping are discovered and at the same time so many test are unreliable. But again… that’s about it. I formed my opinion and now the life goes on.
Next topic please!
About drugs & sports in general:
As soon as there are drugs involved it’s not sports anymore, it’s business. And as soon as you don’t even notice the results of the last leg of the Tour de France, because headlines like “Tour de Trance” and “Tour de Farce” cover them up, it’s not even a show anymore, it’s just sad.
A lot has been written and commented on the MM story. And there has been a lot of whining by Slovenian columnists about inspiration issues and lack of column-worthy topics. My advice: Hire Michael and he’ll write 5 hot and original stories a week not one!!
Well, my opinion on the matter is that although Mojca may not be the only plagiarist in the Slovene mediasphere (is that even a word?) but she did get caught and should therefore take responsibility
for her actions.
Thanks for linking to that article. A very interesting and well-written piece.
BBLN: Now we’re talking! I hope some people from Playboy magazine (or maybe Hustler) are reading this and need a columnist.
Fajdiga: I agree with you. Plagiarism is a shitty thing to do and there’s no good excuse for it.
Michael, I know you would love that.
But seriously, I think plagiarism is one of the downsides of the Slovenian phenomenon that there are (sometimes dubiously) selected few who play a number of roles, e.g. a university professor of literature is at the same time a distinguished writer, editor of a literary magazine, literary critic and possibly a member of a jury that gives away literary prizes (i.e. money). And then there’s this group of columnists who either rotate from newspaper to newspaper, from magazine to magazine OR write columns for 3 or 5 of them at the same time. No wonder poor columnists run out of ideas!
As soon as I stop mooing, which should happen within a week after I’ve stopped injecting myself with the bovine protein, I’ll come up with a witty comment. ’til then I’ll be trolling the Internet for bits here and bits there that I can cobble together to claim as my own thoughts. I thought that was the whole point of the I’net; everyone would have one big and same thought!