Micheal Vick Makes Me Sick

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Josh Nash

Social climber

riverbank ca

Sep 19, 2011 - 12:49pm PT

It is because I don't think two years is a sufficient sentence for what he did. In my value system, what he did was too egregious for only two years.

But in societies value system, which is the law, he served his sentence and did his time. No one is arguing what he did is not wrong. It is very wrong. The systematic way he abused animals speaks to a deeper trouble that I really think is what most people want to see punished. I get that. it's just that there are worse offenses out there that don't get half the attention.

TwistedCrank

climber

Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom

Sep 19, 2011 - 12:57pm PT

Bullfighting doesn't make you sick. Micheal Vick doesn't make you sick. Dogfighting doesn't make you sick. Black people don't make you sick.

You make yourself sick. Take some ownership ferchissakes.

Fat Dad

Trad climber

Los Angeles, CA

Sep 19, 2011 - 01:43pm PT

I understand the claims of people being hard on Vick as a possible result of his also being African-American. However, while that can at times be a justification, it is also trotted out too conveniently as an excuse to avoid further examination of the issue. Do people really think a white NFL player who went to jail for torturing animals wouldn't get flak when returning to the game?
A few points:

1. What Vick did was repugnant. Torturing dogs by making them fight one another (and likely be killed in the process), and then hanging or electrocuting dogs who "underperformed". Absolutely disgusting behavior.

2. Being an omnivore doesn't excuse Vick's behavior. The issue is not killing another animal. The issue is why and how you kill it. I eat meat, but I don't torture the for sport beforehand and then kill it in a gruesome fashion.

3. Sure Vick has "done his time", but that only means he's no longer culpable in the eyes of law authority and can't be repunished for his earlier crime. There is nothing in the service of Vick's criminal penalty that provides that I and the rest of society no longer have a right to make a decision about his lack of character for his earlier actions. He did what he did and I continue to have the right to think he's a scumbag, albeit one who did time. Still makes him a scumbug. Do the people who raised this argument also believe that everyone shouldn't hold a societal grudge against someone who did time for murdering a human being?

4. Vick did his time and does have a right to return to what he did previously if his employer doesn't have a gripe with it. If you don't like it, you don't have to watch.

[Edited for grammar]

dirtbag

climber

Sep 19, 2011 - 01:43pm PT

You're supposed to say "Werner you're a hypocrite you kill plants.

You're worst than a dog .....

I'd bet more mice, squirrels, raccoons, bunnies, weasels, hawks, owls etc are killed during the ground clearing, planting, growing, and harvesting of plants for food than the deliberate slaughter of animals for meat.

P.S. Vick is a son of a bitch who I might not like but who seems to be trying to move on from his past ways.

August West

Trad climber

Where the wind blows strange

Sep 19, 2011 - 01:51pm PT

It does make you wonder at the threshold of crime below which no pro athlete can or could climb out of? How deep a hole can be forgiven by a winning spiral pass?

A lot. An awful f*#king lot.

Huh.?

I know I am in a minority, but I don't why your personal mistakes should affect your economic life (unless the crime is related to your job). If a desk worker (like me or the people I work with) killed a family in a drunk driving accident, I don't see why the company should suspend them for a year. I don't see why pro athletes should be different. If they commit a crime, the criminal justice system should melt out punishment as appropriate.

Now if a truck driver gets a DUI (even off hours) or an athlete goes on a racial tirade in the locker room, sure that's different.

On the other hand, I don't get this need to make athletes out to be heros. They are entertainers who have gotten to where they are by a combination of hard work, opportunity, and being born a physical freak of nature. I don't have any expectations of them being more or less moral than the guy sitting at the desk next to me.

dirtbag

climber

Sep 19, 2011 - 01:53pm PT

Thank God the foxes did it (ate the rabbits) for me. Rabbits cost me a loss of thousands of dollars of trees one year - but still I just couldn't bring myself to killing them. One day, a family of gray foxes moved in (on their own) and BAM! - after a year or so - not a single rabbit in sight. Before that, I thought I was in Australia. It is great to have other animals do all your dirty work for you. Long live the foxes. Now, if we could just find someone who eats Bambi.

Wolves!

:-)

TwistedCrank

climber

Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:03pm PT

Hemingway blew his brains out after getting sh!tfaced. He got what was coming to him. He didn't get a pass.

Fat Dad

Trad climber

Los Angeles, CA

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:12pm PT

Right. You perhaps saw the results of that decision yesterday evening?

Did you watch the game, perchance?

No, sorry. Totally clueless.

JEleazarian

Trad climber

Fresno CA

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:12pm PT

I doubt that anyone cares whether or by whom the posters on this thread choose to be entertained. What gets peoples' dander up (pun intended) comes down to crime and punishment.

A lot a people don't want Vick ever to have a good life because of what he did. In effect, they think that the legal punishment is too light for the crime, but even that wouldn't reach the real conflict, which is one of foregiveness and redemption.

If a person commits a crime, pays his or her legal debt to society, stops committing crime and tries to live a law abiding life, is that enough? For some people, apparently not.

It's hard for me not to take this issue personally, because I have been convicted of a crime, served time, lost everything but my family, and had to start economically from zero at an age where I should have been contemplating retirement. The crime took place when I was suffering from a severe, undiagnosed depression, (but that had no effect on the court or on my sentence.) Because I have native abilities and skills I developed before I got depressed, and which returned after being treated and serving my time, I am now able to make a living that is significantly better than average. Is that fair, or should I (and therefore my family) pay more?

I see Vick's situation differing from mine more in degree than in principle. Lots of entertainers live lives far from model citizenship. Those who think what Vick went through as trivial should try imprisonment sometime. In addition, because of the nature of his skill, he lost perhaps 25% of his effective working life as an entertainer from his punishment.

He will never lose the shame of what he did, and no one says anyone needs to watch or to like him, but I shudder at the thought of the apparent unforegiveness I see.

John

August West

Trad climber

Where the wind blows strange

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:14pm PT

The first three words are key.

Some people don't want to be entertained by a person who kills dogs for run and profit, no matter how freaky their physical nature may prove.

But it is ok for the computer software you are using this very moment to be programmed by someone who killed a family in a drunk driving accident?

(H*Y*P*O*C*R*I*T*E ;-)

James Doty

Trad climber

Phoenix, Az.

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:22pm PT

Man, that's a stretch.

Homer

Mountain climber

742 Evergreen Terrace

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:25pm PT

Fat Dad - it's not that our reaction is just a result of race or that race is a justification for what he did - it's more that we're mostly unwilling to examine it. We can float along for 81 posts on this topic without mentioning race, while saying that it's outrageous that athletes like Michael Vick and Tiger Woods get paid so much money. We say that we have a "colorblind" condemnation of criminals, while labeling them "inbred." I think there's more to it than what we're saying.

dirtbag

climber

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:31pm PT

John, I'm glad we live in a society where second chances are possible.

And I'm glad Vick seems to have turned things around.

But I still don't have to like the guy.

Fat Dad

Trad climber

Los Angeles, CA

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:38pm PT

Fat Dad - it's not that our reaction is just a result of race or that race is a justification for what he did - it's more that we're mostly unwilling to examine it.

I didn't sift thru all the responses. I agree that with discussions like this, race can be the big elephant in the room that no one mentions. Although comments like "inbred" (if directed toward a person of color) are pretty direct comments on ethnicity.

From my perspective, what he did was objectionable apart from how he looks or where he came from. While some on this site have said that it is less objectionable "in his culture" or something like that, I think that's a cop out. Vick is an American. In American culture, torturing animals that most of us keep as pets is horrible. This is one of those issues where I think that society can establish an objective standard of what's considered "right".

James Wilcox

Boulder climber

Santa Barbara

Sep 19, 2011 - 02:40pm PT

One interesting tidbit. The NFL commission was more concerned over the illegal betting, especially since Vick's Bad Newz Kennel was transporting dogs over state lines (which is why the Feds got involved), then they were about the actual dog fighting.

On a more positive note, two more of the Vick dogs in sanctuary just passed their AKC Canine Good Citizenship trials. The courts had mandated that all these dogs had to pass this test before EVER being considered for adoption out of the sanctuary. Most of the rescued Vick dogs were either breeding stock or bait dogs (one of the sicker elements to this "sport")but these two were fighting dogs with the scars to prove it.

Homer

Mountain climber

742 Evergreen Terrace

Sep 19, 2011 - 03:18pm PT

Here’s an interesting study about pet ownership and attachment among veterinarian students:

http://www.animalsandsociety.org/assets/library/463_s1032.pdf

White students had significantly higher (attachment) scores than did African American students. White students also had significantly more pets and more kinds of pets.

So an example of how we are "colorblind" is that a white person might say that our reaction to Vick is not related to race – that “people” have a deep-seated affection for their pets and that’s why there’s a reaction. The more highly pet-attached “white” perspective is “normal” and the basis for this “normal” reaction – the difference to the less attached “black“ perspective is not even acknowledged.

Or a white person might point to a respected black entertainer, like Oprah Winfrey, as evidence that we’re colorblind, while being careful to include the highly relevant information that they don’t watch that entertainer.

For me, I’m not so worried that the KKK is going to come take my black daughter – the danger to her is subtler than that.

John Moosie

climber

Beautiful California

Sep 19, 2011 - 03:47pm PT

I loved reading Hemmingways books. That said, I hate bullfighting and I hate dogfighting. I don't hate either Vick or Hemmingway.

Not to excuse either of them, but bullfighting was much more accepted when Hemmingway was alive, so it is harder to condemn a person for such an act.

Some societies are more grown up then others in some areas and are less grown up in other areas.

Even though I love football, it would be hard for me to root for Michael Vick to win. Just because you forgive someone doesn't mean you necessarily make room for them in your life. I could forgive a thief, but unless I truly believed they had repented, I wouldn't give them the keys to my house. I don't think Michael Vick has truly repented. I doubt he fully understands just how horrible dog fighting is. I wouldn't be surprised that if he left football and moved to some region or country where dogfighting was allowed, that he wouldn't find his way back to it.

But I am also not going to tell him he can't play football.

JohnE, I don't exactly remember what you were convicted for. It seems like you did something you thought was morally correct, but illegal. I have much more faith in your morals then I do in Michael Vicks. Perhaps over time I could grow to trust him, I just don't right now. Some of that is because I haven't had a conversation with him. Perhaps he truly does regret what he did, and not just because it kept him from football, but because it is morally reprehensible. If he does truly regret it, then I could go back to enjoying watching him play.

TwistedCrank

climber

Ideeho-dee-do-dah-day boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom

Sep 19, 2011 - 04:16pm PT

I'd pay ten dollars just to watch her try and do a sit up. Fukk. Twenty.

JEleazarian

Trad climber

Fresno CA

Sep 19, 2011 - 04:19pm PT

Thanks, John M and LEB, but I did what I considered then and now something immoral. If I thought otherwise, I would have fought it.

As Dirtbag said, you don't have to like the guy. I was more concerned with what seemed, to me, more of an attitude that he deserved perpetual punishment, rather than mere dislike.

john