Michael Vick’s Sob Story

I just read these letters written by Michael Vick and a few of his supporters (including his mother, Hank Aaron, George Foreman, and Shirley Franklin - the goddamn mayor of Atlanta) to the judge in his dogfighting trial.  They’re pleading for a lenient sentence in light of all the “good things” Vick has done, and how he’s genuinely remorseful.  First of all, I can’t understand why anyone is willing to gloss over Vick’s vicious, cruel, deliberate, and premeditated actions just because he maintained a good public image — let alone people with reputations, and no personal connection to the case.  How can anyone perceive dogfighting as anything short of shockingly cruel?  And how could they claim that his entrepeneurship and operation of Bad Newz Kennelz for six years was a temporary lapse in judement, a one-time mistake?  Their shoddy arguments are all the same in principle: that an already wealthy athlete’s canicidal cruelty to dogs for his own profit is morally insignificant compared to his history of visiting poor kids in the hospital.  The prevailing sentiment seems to be that compassion is for humans, and if we throw any scraps of it to the dogs, they’re lucky.

The main point is: fuck Michael Vick.  His letter reeks of hyopcrisy; he even has the audacity to portray himself as an animal lover who never learned that dogfighting was a serious crime.  Perhaps he loves women too—so much so that he’d start raping them and taking their money if they ever knocked that statute down to a misdemeanor?  I also bristled at the part where he emphasizes that his dogs were in “good health” and he always “made sure of the continuous upkeep of the dogs.”  I suppose if you counted running the fighting dogs on treadmills as keeping them in “good health,” he might have had a point - if only his other method hadn’t been drowning, hanging, and electrocuting the dogs who weren’t in such “good health.”  It’s also morbidly amusing that he says he’ll work with PETA to fight animal cruelty — PETA is responsible for far more unnecessary animal deaths than he is, especially in North Carolina, not far from Vick’s hometown of Newport News!  I hope the judge has enough ethical sense to give Vick the maximum sentence.  Maybe in prison, when Vick gets his ass kicked by other inmates, he’ll realize that Cajun Rules aren’t really fair.

And shame on Hank Aaron, Warrick Dunn, George Foreman, and Mayor Franklin.  They’ve exemplified the worst kind of anthropocentrism and do not deserve the respect and recognition they’ve traditionally enjoyed.

Lastly, to those of you who are still clinging to some fantasy of Vick’s righteousness, get real.  He led a double life, and he was a brute who hurt living, feeling beings for his own perverse enjoyment and profit.  No matter how remorseful he claims to be (while pleading for leniency), he wouldn’t have ruthlessly engaged in this blood sport for six years unless he were, face it, a bad man.