… you should watch his ESPN SportsCenter interview tonight. I must say, what an impressive young man! It doesn’t seem to be online yet, but please try to watch it if you can.
I know everything about that dogfighting fucker I want or need to know. Here’s hoping he blows out a knee, or otherwise suffers a career ending injury.
Blows out a knee? I hope he blows out a blood vessel in his brain and then has to spend the rest of his life paralyzed.
He did come off petty well in the interview. It increased my respect for him as a person. He’s still a pretty lousy starting Quarterback, of course, but that’s ultimately less important.
If your attitude is representative of society as a whole, what motivations do people have to improve themselves? If another’s cruelty brings out further cruelty in you, that says more about you than it does about him.
I think that Vick showed that he is an intelligent, caring human being. He was completely genuine and didn’t brush aside his past. The part where he tells us how he had to try to explain to his daughter why they couldn’t get a dog told me that he will never be able to escape his past.
I’m not making excuses for him, but dogfighting is cultural. If you didn’t grow up in that culture, you really can’t judge. We don’t have the same attitude toward men who climb on horses and whip them with a stick to make them run faster, we celebrate them. Not everyone who owned slaves 150 years ago was a bad person. Unfortunately, many of them just happened to be born in that culture.
I prefer to look at the positives. I believe that the news and publicity surrounding Vick his dogfighting may actually reduce dogfighting in the future. So as bad as Vick was, he could ultimately save more dogs than he harmed.
While I agree with the rest of your post, didn’t Michael Vick grow up in our culture, a culture that finds dog fighting to be inhumane? Newport News is not significantly different from the rest of America (and I’m assuming that most people who care about Michael Vick are from the US).
If I was Max Rockatansky, I’d eat a dog in a heartbeat.
There are many, many cultures that attempt to co-exist in our country. Michael Vick grew up in a dangerous crime-ridden area. I can understand how he might have been exposed to ugly things that most of have not. It’s not like he invented dog fighting.
Cultural does not explain a thing about him. It may have been common where he lived and grew up, but I submit that a lot of his neighbors were disgusted by the practice. It is not a universally loved sport in poor or black neighborhoods. It takes a callous disregard for the feelings of the animals involved. Not everybody has that . Vick not only did it ,but reveled in it. He built kennels and fighting rings and made it bigger.
The lengths that Vick and other dogfighters go to in order to hide their activities negates any sort of “it’s their culture” bullshit argument.
If I were a poor black person it would drive me to bloody murder to hear people say, “Well, dogfighting is cultural.”
It is a cultural thing. Poor black people aren’t the only ones who enjoy animal fighting either. Being a cultural thing doesn’t make it right though.
This line of thinking ends up with me not being allowed to have any opinions about anyone except very similar people in my own immediate area. Am I not allowed to judge the Taliban now because I didn’t grow up in their culture? Of course people are going to judge. Deciding that it’s cultural is a judgment.
Having remorse in his situation doesn’t make him quite as impressive a person than if he’d figured out it was wrong before getting caught.
Wait, so if a serial killer is found who killed 50 people, and I therefore want him to be put to death, I’m morally worse than him?
I’m not saying that Vick is equivelant to a serial killer - just the concept of saying “I wish this guy who did evil stuff dies” is somehow more inherently evil than the evil stuff the guy did is silly.
I didn’t grow up in a culture that has honor killings and stoning women to death for getting raped either, but I feel plenty equipped to judge.
Yeah, them po’ black folks don’t know no better than to torture animals. You’re an asshole for judging them.
Frankly, I think that’s the worst kind of racism.
Boy, I don’t think this is going the way Jackknifed Juggernaut envisioned it would.
My first thoughts were similar to many. Who gives a rat’s ass about Michael Vick, the dog killer, after what he did, but upon further reflection I found myself more open to the OP’s view. Vick can’t undo what he did. We don’t need to forgive his crimes but if he is growing and changing his ways we could show some compassion for him. The story about telling his daughter why they can’t get a puppy is pretty compelling. I hope he really has changed and I hope his change can bring change to the dogfighting underworld he left behind too.
I hope you realize that Michael Vick has people who write stuff for him to say in interviews.
I’m kinda meh on Vick, by the way. I mean, people look past killers and rapists and obstructors of justice (relating to murder) in the NFL - but dogfighting gets a massive outcry. I’m not saying it shouldn’t, I’m just saying it’s inconsistent to devalue crimes against humans here.
For purely selfish reasons, I like watching Vick play, so I don’t oppose his reinstatement with any real sentiment. If the NFL consistently barred criminals from the ranks, but gave him a special pass, I could see the level of outrage.
But yeah, reading some statements he went practiced a hundred times with his publicist isn’t going to change my mind.
This, this a thousand times. There is no shortage of poor black people in this country and most of them aren’t out there fighting animals to the death in a fucking pit. Fuck him.
He did not just torture animals. He set up a kennel and raised the dogs to fight ,He built a fighting ring. He strangled dogs that did not perform well enough. He watched them get torn apart and enjoyed it.
It was not an incident. He was involved in systematically killing and maiming dogs for fun. I can forgive a person who gets in an accident. I can forgive a person who makes a mistake. This is much. much bigger ,and more involved. It shows character. it shows his disrespect for the lives of animals. It shows a continuing disobeying of laws It was not a felony. It was a whole bunch of them for a long time. It is more.