I had some thoughts on cycling—on the honest-to-goodness racing of bicycles—earlier this week. But dang if I didn’t get a little distracted by the bellowing and harrumphing of bands of lawyers as they debated, at a micrometer level, whose client had the more impressive virile organ.

And you know, it could almost be passable fodder for drama if the various parties involved weren’t so irretrievably bad at finding engaging, creative ways to tell each other to screw off. Their press releases are routinely so terrible that there isn’t a cycling fan left who hasn’t thought “man, even I could do this better”.

No explanation needed

The jokes, dear reader, have already been made.

I’m sure you think you’ve got some clever new gibe to add, some original snark to spin-off that will raise the bar that little bit higher—and in some cases, I might even believe you. But in humor, as in all things, there is a point of diminishing return, and we have long-since passed it.

Or perhaps your intentions are noble. Perhaps you feel this story is so big, the celebrity status involved in it so outsized, and whichever side you disagree with so clearly idiotic and unjustifiable, that it’s totally worth your continued effort to try and reason your opposition into an inevitable concession. If history is any indicator, that just isn’t going to happen.