Listen, everyone is up for ridicule, and slander and various other atrocious activities. It's the only way we can avoid a life of servitude and idiocy. Get over yourselves, take yourself less seriously. Words do not harm. You can not show me an instance where words have ever harmed someone. If someone was swayed by words to harm someone he was a pathetic excuse for a human being and going to go insane and kill someone anyway. Boo Hoo Hoo, Lance made fun of us. At least you're relevant, lil pussies.

dig some of the gravel out of your vagina, and maybe you'll stop whining...

and in the words of Ice Cube in Bouz in the Hood- "You sound like a little Bitch right now"

I am not real fan of Armstrong...mainly, his Texas-loving, Bush-loving crap...but those jokes were not anything homophobic or whatever you want to see into b/c of some grudge you have against him or because-and here's another-you have your panties in a wad...

I wasn't aware that people actually gave a shit. After actually watching the video, though, I found it utterly benign and at least a little funny; Lance Armstrong is no comedian, but he didn't do half bad for the material he was given (does anyone else think that current events retrospective humor is a little dated at this point?). Gay jokes? Innocuous, plus as an above commenter noted, the real trouble is that a man would feel compelled to defend his heterosexuality just because he likes to go bike riding with other men. French jokes? They have a long and distinguished history in this country, and I see no reason to stop now, especially seeing as how the French sporting press have been, well, assholes toward Armstrong.

Frankly, I would have enjoyed it more if his confession was that he used an artificial testicle. That alone would have made it worth watching.

John Kennedy once said (more or less), "There are three things that are sorely overrated in this country: J. Edgar Hoover, the State of Texas, and mounted deer heads." I used to agree, but Lance Armstrong has made me like Texas again, and how can you argue with that?

I have more of a problem with the France joke. So the French (tour de France) team accused him of (maybe) juicing, how does that translate into all french people are assholes? So Zidane lost his temper, why tar the entire team? I also didn't like Lance's lionization of himself. "I'm not human"? Come on! I'm sure people who rise to such heights are usually narcissistic, but he could have refused to go to such lengths as inserting himself into a montage humiliating audience members etc. Bode Miller didn't deserve that. Disaster relief? The jokes for Cheney and Brittany Spears were just stupid. So were the gay jokes. Thanks to the previous poster for giving the background; it makes a little more sense if he was also poking fun at himself. In fact, the only joke that aroused a chuckle was, "I'd give my left nut to be here." Bad writing, bad delivery. When it wasn't rude, he was talking about how cool he is.

...and is strangely unnatural as host of a sports award show, but I think it's an overreaction to get too worked up over the "in the rear" or the "Jake, eyes up here" jokes. Video Dog's intro had me expecting far, far worse. Is it because it's a sports show that gay jokes should be avoided (since we all know how homophobic sports stars are)? If the same jokes had been made at the Oscar ceremony, would Dog still be outraged?

The bigger question here is WTF was Carmen Electra doing at the ESPYs?

"We're not big advocates of decorum -- which most award shows really suffer from. But we are fans of funny, and these jokes -- no matter how frantically Ben Stiller and wife clap clap clap away! -- just aren't."

Actually, Ben and his wife seemed to be just about the only people in attendance who didn't find the jokes wildly funny. I wonder what feminists will have to say about Ashley Judd's reaction. She appeared to enjoy the jokes quite a lot. The staff at Salon(on video dog and broadsheet) has been frantically working double-time lately to ferret any and all actions *anywhere* that could possibly be perceived as intolerant. They're batting about .150 so far. Yawn.

...but this wasn't as bad as you made it sound. First, he certainly didn't write that. Maybe he should have had the good sense to not say it, but I've heard much worse from Letterman, Leno and the rest of the late night guys.

I find many better reasons to be upset at Lance lately.

What with his French bashing and gay jokes, Lance is turning out to be a hideous embarrassment. I can't wait till all the steroids accusations turn out to be true.

Tabloids and prominent online gossip blogs have been snickering and making under the table jokes about Lance, Jake and Matthew hanging out with each other and going on bike rides together...because when three good looking males go for a bike ride it's gay, but when 25 ugly guys hang out in front of mirrors at the gym it's decidedly not gay.

So take it in context. He's being called out inter(net)nationally as being gay with those two guys, so I find it hard to see the jokes as gay-bashing. He's jumping on the bandwagon to laugh at what others are saying at him, probably in hopes of dispelling the ridiculous rumor mill that has sprouted up around his friendships.

The true culprit here is the heterosexism that says it's not ok for males to enjoy each other's company unless they're lighting something on fire or drinking heavily. Where's the outrage about that media narrative?

Lance, you ride bicycles. You're not a good television award show host. Go back to riding bicycles please. As for the gay jokes at the expense of the very handsome Jake Gyllenhal and Brokeback Mountain. They just weren't funny. Even Dave Chappelle or even Carlos Mencia could have wrote better gay jokes that attempted to appeal to a supposed straight audience than this. And we know that they make them out of fun not making fun of an entire group. Go back to bicycles.