Michael Vick and French Poodle Fajitas!
Just the other day, NFL commissioner Rodger Goodell decided, in his infinite and extra-judicial wisdom, to suspend quarterback Michael Vick for the first two games of the upcoming football season. His decision is predicated on the team owner’s desire to (my opinion) satisfy the outrage of our nation’s outrage industry. That America has an outrage industry is evidenced by every news report of just about every issue in the news. There is someone in America that is outraged by everything and anything. These people are loud, disruptive and they occasional resort to violence, both to other Americans and to the rules of logic!
One can be against abortion and credibly argue that abortion is murder, but when your anti abortion zeal causes you to murder an abortion provider, you have done violence both to another American and the logic of the abortion is murder rational that sparked your outrage in the first place! Similarly, screaming at town hall meetings about a socialist take over of health care by evil government operatives, and then warning those same government operatives to keep their government hands of your Medicare gives logic an aneurism! Clearly, in the words of musician and social commentator Gil Scott Heron; Americans lead the world in outrage!
In the Vick extra-judicial continued suspension situation, the outrage of the “outragers” (for lack of a better term) is a little more veiled. To understand their outrage, we need to understand what Vick did and what consequences his crimes have precipitated. After denying his involvement to police, the media and Commissioner Goodell, Vick pled guilty to bank rolling a dog fighting and gambling ring at a property he owned in a rural section of Virginia. Now comes the part of his plea that I think has the “outragers” really outraged! Vick, along with bankrolling this nefarious operation, pled to chocking and electrocuting poor performing dogs! Outrageous!
Here, it’s important to understand just what a plea deal is and why an accused criminal defendant would seek one. In a nut shell, a plea deal is an offer from the state to entice a suspect to forgo an expensive and time consuming jury trial by permitting them to plead guilty to the offense for which they were charged and receive a shorter prison sentence in return. Now this is generally a good deal for all involved, but defendants are stuck with whatever details of the crime the state decides to saddle them with. Thus, if while accepting a plea deal in a bank robbing case, the state decides to add that you also kicked kittens and puppies, then so be it.
So when Michael Vick pled guilty to being the ringleader of a dog fighting/gambling ring, he had to accept the states contention that he also chocked and electrocuted dogs as part of the deal and as a consequence, the “outragers” were outraged! The Animal rights organization known as PETA has taken the lead in expressing its outrage and has suggested that before Vick is allowed to play football again he should undergo a psychological evaluation and counseling! So adamant in their outrage are these “outragers” that they permit absolutely no deviation from their “anti-redemptive” position. So insistent are they in their “we want more blood from a Vick turnip” position, that when columnist and author David Zirin attempted to argue in support of Vick’s right to resume his career after he was released from jail, they all but suggested (in Mr. Zirin’s estimation) that he and Vick couldn’t wait to get their hands a some “French Poodle Fajitas”! Now that’s outrageous! For his un-American defense of Mr. Vick’s right to avail himself of his rights as an American, the PETA people are outraged and as a result Commissioner Goodell is contemplating suspending Mr. Zirin’s column for the next two weeks!
The entire sports “Blabberatti” has gone on breathlessly to examine every aspect of the criminal and moral case against Vick, and ESPN has led the way by providing their own legal analyst and holding a televised town hall meeting to help viewers understand the legal and professional hurdles that awaited Mr. Vick! One would assume that with all this expert analysis devoted to this singular issue, no stone would be left unturned. Unfortunately, if you assumed that, you would be sorely mistaken!
Now the problem with this analysis, and its quite problematic, is that with all the breathless coverage and expert analysis, the only perspective that has been offered assumes the absolute integrity of the justice system and the “air-tightness” of their case against Vick! It’s important to remember that the case was initially investigated by Virginia’s local police, and that they were unable to get any of the men they found at the scene of the crime to implicate Vick. Believing that such activities couldn’t go on in a home Vick owned without his knowledge (on this I agree), the local authorities pressed these men for information on Vick and his involvement in this criminal enterprise. Being unable to obtain the information they sought, they either requested assistance from or were taken over by the US Justice Department!
One of the things that has (still) never been spoken of in all the breathless coverage and analysis of this case is the fact that the Justice Department was then headed by Attorney General Alberto “I don’t recall” Gonzales! Now I know hindsight is 20/20, but by the time the Vick case emerged we had already learned about the ethically challenged Attorney General and yet all our “experts” assumed his complete integrity (so much for the liberal media)! It seems curious that no one has questioned what it was that the Justice Department’s prosecutors offered or threatened Mr. Vick’s previously uncooperative friends with to get them to cooperate and implicate Vick! Another problem exists on the face of the plea deal. Mr. Vick is said to have chocked and electrocuted poor performing dogs. Now perhaps the Justice Department had a limitless budget to devote to this case, but it seems questionable to me that even the Department of Justice would have the funds or the desire to do a “CSI-type” investigation into just how a dead dog died!
Even if the Justice Department had the resources to conduct such an investigation, unless they found trace evidence of Vick’s fingers around the skeleton of some recently exhumed dog (they did exhume several dogs), common sense would lead one to conclude that if a dog needed to be killed, and no “Obama-care” death panel was available, one of the three “thousandaires” (Vick’s friends) and not the multi millionaire quarterback (Vick) would do the killing! You would think that at least one member of the entire sports “Blabberatti” would have suggested that a pro quarterback would be unlikely to do this kind of dirty work!
Still another problem with this case and this gets to where I agree with the commissioner’s decision to suspend Vick for an additional two games, in fact (tongue fully in cheek) I think Vick’s suspension should have been made indefinite! Common sense, which really isn’t too common these days, not just suggests, but demands that there had to be other people (perhaps several others) involved in this enterprise! If only the three men who lived in that house and Vick were involved in this enterprise, how did the local authorities ever find out about it? Could it possibly be that these men would sit around and fight the dogs that they owned (and trained) and then gamble on these dogs with Michael Vick’s money? No other gamblers, no other dog owners and trainers and no veterinarians to treat dogs that Vick hadn’t yet decided to electrocute!
The commissioner can’t be seen to condone this kind of flagrant disrespect for law enforcement. Michael Vick was not a part of the Bush administration and therefore the defense of executive privilege (also known as no snitching) was not available! There had to be other people involved in this criminal enterprise, and Vick should sit in NFL purgatory until he provides the authorities with their names! Of course, the Commissioner has demonstrated his own disrespect for the law enforcement community in that his extra suspension questions the appropriateness of the plea deal negotiated by the Justice Department. He couldn’t have thought the punishment was appropriate, and then punish him some more just for laughs and giggles! That would be outrageous! Perhaps the Commissioner also has questions about the Attorney General! Removing my tongue from my cheek, I’ll move on to more serious matters.
Any real analysis of this whole sorry episode demands that we confront the pink elephant that is always in the room when we discuss criminal justice and that, of course, is race! Standing right along side the racial “imbalance” we find in the criminal justice system is that same racial “imbalance” in the application of league discipline! One has only to consult Justice Department or FBI statistics to see who (by race) commits what crimes versus who (again, by race) gets incarcerated for these criminal acts to understand the “unique” relationship black people have with America’s criminal justice system. Similarly, the imbalance of league discipline can clearly be seen, not so much within any of the professional leagues, but between them. League discipline is much harsher and the rules much more restrictive in those leagues numerically dominated by black athletes!
Hockey players are permitted to fight on the ice (every game) and baseball players can run across the entire out field to engage in a team brawl, whereas basketball players get fined and suspended if they so much as leave the bench during an altercation! Football players have their team penalized if they talk trash to an opponent (I wonder if Hockey players ever talk trash BEFORE THEY FIGHT) and their teams are likewise penalized if players celebrate touchdowns too zealously. So from age requirements to dress codes (for players who never leave the bench) only those leagues with a predominance of black players are subject to these restrictive and paternalist rules and the corresponding disciplinary enforcement! When one considers all the blabbering that goes on amongst the sports talkers, can we really believe that the glaring racial imbalances we find in the application of criminal justice and those same (racial imbalances) we find in the application of sports league discipline have never occurred to anyone (black or white)?
So in Vick’s case, the three men (all close friends of his) who wouldn’t provide any information regarding Vick’s involvement when questioned by local authorities, provided that icon of unquestioned integrity Alberto “I don’t recall” Gonzales with information about Vick and nobody else! Again, since common sense demands that there had to be others involved, and we’re familiar with Justice Department statistics, we have to ask if these men, or Mr. Vick were even asked about other people. We also have to assume, an assumption based on the same statistics, that if others were implicated and those other individuals were also black, they too would have been prosecuted! Here yet again, a town hall meeting and an expert legal analyst, yet no one even raised any of these issues!
And then there’s the inconvenient fact that for at least six plus months a year, Vick was participating in practice (four or five days a week) and then Quarterbacking the Atlanta Falcons, usually every Sunday or Monday night. In the off season, he had mandatory team drills and training camp. He also was a single black man who every single woman knew was a multi-millionaire in a city where single black women out number single black men by a ratio approaching twenty to one! Given that, and the fact that his job was not in the same state as the dog fighting enterprise, does it seem reasonable to assume that Vick wasn’t as intimately involved in the day to day operations of this criminal enterprise as we have been led to believe, and why hasn’t this occurred to any of the “experts” during their breathless coverage of this sad but revealing case?
Finally, given what we know (or what government statistics continue to reveal) about how race continues to impact our criminal justice system and the disciplinary practices of some of our sports leagues, we have to conclude (if we’re honest) that whether it was Joe Sixpack, Joe “The Plumber”, or Joe Montana, neither of these men, after serving nearly two years in LEVENWORTH and forfeiting about $135,000,000 for a crime they committed against nonhuman beings would receive an extra “quasi” judicial sanction from the commissioner of a sports league! This is particularly troubling in an environment where some, previously considered “law and order” political types are now arguing that we shouldn’t even investigate people we know tortured other human beings!
So I guess I’ll be joining the good people from PETA and the rest of the “outragers”, except my outrage is sparked by something quite different then theirs. I’m a dog lover and have owned them all my life, but I also love other human beings (I’m funny that way). So I chose to see what is directly in front of me (as opposed to the Stevie Wonder-ism that seems to afflict so many of our professional sports talkers), so I’m opposed to what’s being done to Michael Vick, Having said that, I guess I’ll also be having one of those French Poodle fajita’s!
A Bonus Prediction: The Philadelphia Eagles will be handsomely rewarded for taking a chance and signing Michael Vick in this unforgiving climate when they trade him next year and receive a Hershal Walker-like ransom (a combination of players and draft picks) that will create a dynasty for that franchise! Skeptical Raven’s fans should consider what we would have been willing to give up if Kyle Boller were still our quarterback!
Michael G. McFadden
Insert photo caption or credit here
Comments
do you have french poodles names like for puppies and dogs
Sorry Sonya Garza, but I have no idea what your asking! I do have a question for you tho'. Are you troubled by all the unasked questions I point to in this article? There certainly hasn't been a shortage of news coverage devoted to this case, but where is the complete analysis?
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!