We like our female athletes like we like our coffee – brutish and startlingly masculine – which is why we like Marion Jones so much.

Oh come on, you remember Marion Jones – the American athlete who won five medals at the 2000 Olympics and then lost them all because she was pumped up to the knockers on steroids, and then ended up getting thrown in jail for the exact same reason. Essentially Marion Jones is the Incredible Hulk, only bulkier and with a deeper voice.

Oprah Winfrey thinks so too, because yesterday Marion Jones appeared on her show in her first post-prison interview. Were there tears? Yes. Were there hamfisted stabs at self-help therapy-speak? Yes. Was there a moment where Marion Jones lost her temper with Oprah Winfrey, crushed her skull with one hand and javelined her dead body into the sun. No, no there wasn’t. And don’t think we’re not disappointed about that.

There’s a reason why Oprah Winfrey is such a powerful force in the media. No, it’s not because she’s so rich that she can afford to send all dissenters to her special school for child abuse, it’s because Oprah Winfrey believes in second chances.

It doesn’t matter how down on your luck you are – whether you’re a fat Scientologist who thinks she looks good in a bikini or a dwarfish Scientologist who just seems a bit creepy – Oprah Winfrey will always give you a second chance. Unless you’re French, in which case Oprah Winfrey thinks you can piss off, you racist.

Anyway, the latest recipient of Oprah Winfrey’s almighty wave of forgiveness is Marion Jones, the mannish athlete who was thrown in jail earlier this year because ate all the steroids before the Olympics eight years ago.

In case you don’t remember, at the 2000 Olympics Marion Jones won gold medals in the 100m, 200m and 4x400m relay and bronze in the 4x100m relay and the long jump although, in retrospect, it was probably because she kept stabbing loads of nandrolone into her gut. Since then, Marion Jones has been retired from athletics, been stripped of her medals and completed a six-month stint in jail for lying about the doping.

And that’s where Oprah stepped in. Yesterday, Oprah Winfrey allowed Marion Jones her first televised interview since leaving jail, but only on the condition that, according to Winfrey Law, Marion Jones had to babble some mawkish shit that sounds as if it was directly stolen from Chicken Soup For The Soup. AP reports:

Jones, 33, apologized to her teammates and tearfully read a letter she wrote in prison, in which she told her children she lied to federal prosecutors because she didn’t love herself enough to tell the truth… “I don’t have athletics anymore to hide behind,” Jones said. “In the past, it was Marion Jones, the athlete. … I don’t have that cover anymore. I have really had to find out who I am and why I make certain choices.”

Marion Jones didn’t love herself enough to tell the truth. That’s disgusting. What sort of a mother would write a thing like that in a letter to her children? She didn’t love herself enough? It’s bad enough that their mother went to jail for lying about her steroid use – the last thing they’d want to hear is an explanation of how often she got to masturbate.

That is what she meant, right?