By – Dank Lucas
“They’re his dog’s, he can do what he wants with them,” replied fellow National Football League player Clinton Portis when asked two years ago how he felt about the dog fighting allegations against Michael Vick.
While his statement isn’t going to rally an army of dog-fighting Vick supporters to march on Washington and demand the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback be reinstated as the starting quarterback for the Falcons, it does make one wonder if the culture gap between inner city African-Americans and their suburban counterparts is too wide to allow one to judge the other.
Too often in America we blindly weigh in on situations without taking the time to consider the cause, and effect, of the perceived actions.
After the April 25, 2007 raid on Michael Vick’s property found, amongst other things, 66 dogs (most of which were pit bulls), a dog-fighting pit, bloodstained carpets and equipment commonly associated with dog fighting, the rich, and mostly white men associated with Vick seemed to back away slowly as if he was showing symptoms of a contagious flesh-eating disease that could attack their pockets at any moment (I wonder how many of them bet on dogs at Mike‘s house).
After years of building Michael Vick into a walking, talking – better yet – scrambling, tossing, financial empire, they cut their losses and turned their backs on him faster than George Dubya turned on Rummy.
As soon as the PETA Moms and Paris Hilton wannabees became an Army of Darkness marching toward Falcon headquarters like Saruman himself was leading them into Middle Earth, Nike pulled his best-selling signature shoe from stores, the NFL yanked his best-selling No. 7 jersey, and the Falcons front office began litigation to recoup his signing bonus.
Professional athletes make their bosses exponential amounts of money. Wouldn’t it have been refreshing if just one of the multi-billion dollar corporations previously invested in Vick owned a pair big enough to say “We will not live long enough to spend the amount of money we have made off of Michael Vick’s abilities to play football and no matter what he did we’re going to support him!”
Let’s picture a young project boy named Michael, growing up under the poverty level like so many of our inner city youth today. His prize possession, a dog given to him to raise. He feeds and cares for it with what little money he can scrape together and grows a bond with it like nothing he has experienced in his young life.
It’s a Pit Bull, a dog known to him and everyone around him in his city as a fighting dog. Mike spends all the time he can with the dog until it’s big and strong enough to take it to the local fights. Some older attendees see Mike’s dog and decide to bet large amounts of money on Mike’s dog to win. It does, and the older group who bet on Michael’s dog pay him tips from their winnings, perhaps the largest amount of money the child has seen thus far in his life. With the winnings he buys another dog to raise and the cycle starts again.
Now picture this same child as a grown man given millions of dollars for his ability to run with and throw a football, betrayed by the same company of people he kept at those dog fights while growing up.
They “snitched” on him to save themselves from prosecution, and Mike found himself being tried by a jury of his “peers.”
But they weren’t his peers and therein lied the problem. Was Michael judged by the neighbor who would let his mother bum ten bucks when she needed it? No. Was Michael prosecuted by the Boy’s and Girl’s Club staff where he spent so much time growing up? No. Was he judged by single mothers from the neighborhood he grew up in? No.
He was in the hands of the same hypocrites who made millions off him and then turned their backs, pockets still fat, and rode off into the sunset searching for the next Michael Vick.
6 Comments
This is the most hollow argument for the support of dog fighting I’ve ever seen. Are we to be apologists for a guy who participated in a sick and cruel business just because he was an athlete who had others turn their back on them? I’m not even sure what you’re arguing. Is it less sick because others didn’t support him when the dog blood hit the fan? Is it less sick because “mostly white men” backed away and avoided responsibility? (I have no clue what “white” had to do with it — and don’t tell me about the culture of the hood or how black men grow up with this being okay — at some point we have to be responsible for our actions and if you, as a grown man, don’t recognize how FUCKED it is to have dogs kill each other than you don’t deserve the right to breath.)
So maybe your argument goes like this. As long as you do some good shit — loan a few bucks, volunteer with B&G club (nevermind that this man got rich as fuck doing little more than working out and playing a game — and I’m a fan of the NFL, so don’t go telling me how hard they work and blah, blah, blah — dude still gets ridiculous amounts of money to get sweaty – RIDICULOUS amounts of money — and I don’t care that he got owners richer than him, that’s how big business works, buddy — doesn’t mean I can use that as an excuse for CRUELTY cause the GM of the place I work at is richer than me) — so, back to the argument — do WHAT YOU SHOULD to show your community that you appreciate how rich they made you for playing a game and that gives you a FREE RIDE to do some SICK and CRUEL things to animals?!
Your logic is fucked, man. Your comments about the jury of his peers makes no sense… sure, it wasn’t the people he reached out to on the jury — but it also wasn’t hypocrites who cashed in off him. That argument is moot, it doesn’t exist, frankly you just made it up.
This weak argument (is there even an argument?) you wrote makes me wonder whether you’re a fan of Michael Vick or a fan of animal cruelty. Either way, there is NO EXCUSE for what he did. And just because more people didn’t take the fall doesn’t excuse his VERY DEEP involvement in a VERY SICK business.
Wake up, brother.
word…i want some things to be clear here. i wrote this in 2007 as an argumentative piece for my first comp class in ten years. The assignment was to pick an absurd subject and try to argue its POV. I had some reservations about running it but hey it was meant to get a rise out of people. I love dogs, cannot wait till i have the room to have one of my own, personally i think dogfighting is disgusting and i really was feeling uneasy about running this after i seen the piece espn had been running about the dogs being adopted. i meant to get on here and leave a comment/disclaimer saying this before it got under someones skin….i do have a few arguments i ll have to get at you later with tho im outta time for now
*”young project boy named michael” – that sounds horrible i shouldnt have wrote that…
**i think you misread the part about his peers, i was speaking on people who helped HIM as a chiid growing up and who grew up in the same place not people he helped after he became famous which ur insinuating.
heres a couple things i do stand by however
1. He has served his debt and SHOULD be allowed to play football again without further punishment from the NFL(even though i don’t think he was that good to begin with and no im not a fan.)
2. I do think an argument exists for a child or young adult fighting a dog because everything he’s ever been taught says “thats what you do with that kind of dog.”
One of my best friends is from Manilla, one of the most populated and poor places on earth. As a child he said they collected and fought all kinds of animals from banana spiders to roosters for money. Keep in mind there is very little economy there, and hardly enough food or water to go around(akin to american inner cities.) Was he wrong for trying to make a buck? If not then was the young Mike Vick from my story? Is the piss poor farmer who can feed his family for half a decade off a tiger’s hide wrong? How about the african farmer poisoning lions because they’re being hunted while trying to farm their land? Yes, all those things suck and aren’t ethical but the big problem with fighting animal cruelty and animal conservation as a whole will always be the abundance of poverty in the areas where its needed most.
which brings me to point 3
3. There is a giant culture gap that exists between the people who are being prosecuted in this country and around the world, and those doing the prosecuting. Is grown man/Millionaire athlete Michael Vick running an entire bloody enterprise a good example of this? NO. But I’ll make the argument all day for young Mike Vick trying to turn a buck on an empty stomach wether its ethical or not.
oh and for shits and giggles i read in High Times Obama ordered an end to federal raids on California Weed farms and clinics before that “Town Meeting.”…not enough, but at least he isn’t stopping states from creating their own legislature on the subject, which i guess is kind of like decriminalization. Plus if its still illegal federally it will keep the greedy corporates hands off the profits.
Yo, DANK, tell JC not to run old shit that you aint gonna stand by completely. : ) Saves me the trouble of wanting to send some pit bulls after you.
As for letting him play in the NFL, I say BAN HIS ASS. Fuck this shit… most businesses would NEVER rehire you after you went to jail for such horrible crimes and I see no reason that the NFL should be any different. My feeling is, if it wouldn’t be okay for me to do that and get my job back, no reason an already overpaid athlete should get MORE special privileges. That piece of shit already made enough money and if he wasn’t smart enough to save it, fuck him. He made MILLIONS and was, at the same time, murdering animals for fun.
Let him go play in the CFL, though I think Canada is smart enough to tell him to fuck off.
: )
Cool news about Obama and weed. Legalize it, brutha!
Maybe one day you two will get a chance to hug it out. lol
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