The Crushing of Dissent

In any other context, in any other venue and if it had been about anyone else it would not have been a big deal. Writer Edward McClelland’s mortal sin wasn’t that he lied, cheated or killed someone. He was guilty of committing a crime far more provocative.

He told the truth.

It was this truth that he chose to elaborate on in a Salon.com article entitled “How Oprah Ruined the Marathon” that condemned him to the eternal hellfire of internet infamy.

Certainly, the argument that McClelland presented left room for spirited debate. However, even if you didn’t happen to agree with him most objective readers would appreciate his statistically based and well-reasoned argument. It wasn’t exactly a radical ideology that he was espousing but a common sense proposition that 30 years ago would hardly have caused a ripple. What earlier generations of runners would have understood as being so obvious that it required no further discussion, the latest incarnation of the feel-good running boom saw McClelland’s work as a deliberate provocation and a brazen affront to their sensibilities. If Oprah nation needed a cause to rally the troops, McClelland’s title alone provided one.

There was some irony lost in the moral outrage and often vicious anonymous and personal attacks. The same movement that had prided itself on its inclusiveness and non-judgment, a movement that celebrated and welcomed all aspiring athletes regardless of ability was instantaneous in its condemnation of the one man naïve or brave enough to call them out.

McClelland’s confrontational prose certainly didn’t help matters. Referring to Oprah’s participation in the Marine Corps marathon as akin to “a middle-aged woman hauling her flab around the District of Columbia,” it’s possible that most readers with even a passing familiarity with Oprah may have been turned off. For the tens of millions of true believers, it was nothing short of a call to mobilize and within seconds of McClelland’s column going on stream the internet lit up in a frenzy of malice.

However, a closer look at his argument revealed nothing incontrovertible or even particularly controversial. McClelland’s article wasn’t so much an attack on Oprah as much as it was a lament for the decline of what used to constitute excellence in the sport. His piece, if anything was a post mortem on the spirit that had once animated the highest ideals of distance running.

Oprah’s participation may have popularized the marathon, he argued, but the subsequent mass involvement she inspired, paradoxically, diluted the field of North American talent. John Brant in his book Duel in the Sun neatly summarized the paradox writing that, “one hundred thirty-five runners, for instance, virtually every one an American, ran the ’82 Boston Marathon in a time of 2 hours 30 minutes.” Twenty-one years later, only three Americans met this standard in Boston. McClelland’s only sin was telling a truth that no one wanted to hear.

Unsurprisingly Edward McClelland doesn’t want to talk about it anymore and it’s difficult to blame him considering the level of enmity that he endured. He has quietly moved on, writing an acclaimed book on Barak Obama and a travelogue chronicling his journey around the Great Lakes. In the wake of the controversy he created, McClelland essentially decided to pick up his ball, withdraw, and go home.

There is nothing wrong with a 4:30 marathon or even a 10-hour marathon. However, there is something deeply broken with a culture that considers these sorts of marginal acts as grand achievements. There is also something ultimately damning about a culture eager to hand out swift vengeance on those unwilling to agree with these beliefs.