BET rewards Michael Vick with bully pulpit

October 8, 11:00 AMDC Ethical Issues ExaminerLaura Harrison McBride

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Rescued dog with bite scars (AP)

Michael Vick, convicted abuser and killer of dogs for profit who spent 18 months in jail and has already begun playing for a Northeastern football team that shall remain nameless in this column, is now getting a reality show on BET. (Hint: The nameless, and gormless, city is near DC and was actually the site of the Constitutional Convention.)

Hello! Hey. Anyone home? Is BET trying to see if they can make a more ludicrous statement than whatever that dumb publisher did in issuing OJ’s excuse, If I Did It?

Vick, if you may recall, has been interviewed on TV news-ertainment shows ad nauseam, and each time, his wording when speaking about his canine career makes it clear that the only thing he was sorry about was that he got caught and his end run to fame and fortune took a tiny step backward.

One statement in the LA Times story about this BET travesty says it all:

James DuBose, executive producer for the project, said the series would be much more illuminating than Vick's recent media interviews.

Illuminating of what? How well the writers and editors can do their work to present Vick as a decent human being although, to be sure, a poor guileless product of a bad home environment? Illuminating of how greedy producers of TV shows can be? Illuminating of how gullible American audiences can be?

There are lots and lots of products of bad home environments. Some of them are in jail, of course. But some of them took their lives in hand, with or without help, and made a decent life for themselves, generally without abusing dogs and then abusing the U.S. legal system and finally abusing sports.

If BET wants to spend tons of coinage to present a history of one African-American’s horrific upbringing and ultimate success, there are doubtless dozens of other candidates. Probably some of the other candidates could actually benefit from the nice paycheck, not to mention benefiting the rest of us with their story of overcoming adversity.

But Michael Vick? Why not just do Dick Cheney’s life story? Of course, BET wouldn’t do it because Cheney’s not an African-American. But perhaps one of those warm and fuzzy channels could do it. Perhaps producers for one of those cream-puff channels could recast Cheney’s cowardice, depravity and psychosis as something positive that led to his eight years running a nation into the ground while enriching himself and his Halliburton buddies. Now THERE’S a success story.

Gosh, Michael Vick can’t even measure up to Dick Cheney in the docu-series sweepstakes.

So perhaps Vick, a failure even as a desirable role model for African-American success, should slink off into oblivion. The thing is, if he didn’t have the folks at BET bailing his reputation out with a glossed-over cartoon version of what it is to grow up disadvantaged and miserable in America, he couldn’t even get a job as the proverbial dog catcher.

Disclaimer: Before anyone gets all bent out of shape thinking I’m biased on this point, I am. I am biased against greed and stupidity. The very same article would have resulted if it had been MSNBC doing the Vick show. And then people could say I was biased against Vick; this way, they can say I’m biased against BET. In fact, as mentioned, I am biased. I am biased against any organization that would make cheap currency on such a transparent attempt at cleaning up a tarnished image without the owner of that image, in this case Michael Vick, having to do one single substantive thing, on his own, to redeem himself before the nation and, just possibly (I’m hoping) himself. So yes, call it bias if you wish. The fact is, neither BET nor Michael Vick can claim the high ground in this. Both are sweeping Vick's depravity under a rug of Hollywood glitz with the implied purpose of fooling the American public. There is, quite frankly, no acceptable "spin" one can put on running a dog-fighting ring while collecting an NFL paycheck,  just as there is no acceptable "spin" one can put on the man who would be king, Mr. Cheney, weaseling out of his own service in Vietnam, but sending thousands of young people to their deaths in Iraq.