FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Does anyone else see things in this light?

I never thought I would ever agree with, let alone defend, Stephon Marbury.  But the guy had a point when he claimed that as a society, "we don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals...from what I hear, dog fighting is a sport...behind closed doors."

We do indeed shoot other animals, often times for sport.  And that's the key word here, folks.  Not brutal.  Not inhumane, not even cruel, evil, or unusual.  What matters is whether or not the action in question is a sport.  For some reason, fights to the death amongst animals, say dogs or roosters is illegal.  Interspecies death-matches, on the other hand, are televised on ESPN 2 and that hokey southern sports network.  By interspecies death-match, I mean a human with a high powered rifle vs. a quail, or a human with a high powered rifle vs. a duck.  Why do we put people shooting birds on TV, but cockfights and dogfights are illegal? 

I'll tell you why.  No quail ever played fetch with you or licked your hand.  You eat quail.  You don't eat dogs.  At least, here in this country, we sure don't.  As we all know, or have been told, in many other countries and cultures, dogs are eaten on a routine basis.  In certain Native American tribes, dog meat was considered a delicacy, while others considered it an abhorrent practice.  Koreans love to eat dog meat, mainly because they believe it has medicinal qualities.  In this country, we have an inherent and decidedly un-democratic stance towards the slaughter, preparing, and consumption of dog meat.  We see it as social taboo.  Why is that?  Well, for one thing, many people around the world have humanized dogs; they see dogs as having natural feelings and to feel empathy for humans, particularly caregivers.  I sure belong in that group.  I can't stand the idea of dogs being slaughtered like cows.  But at the same time, dogs are just animals, like cows.  If we are to be ‘egalitarian,' we can't condemn people for eating an animal just because we like it. 

Similarly, making this dog fighting case into a legal and ethical issue is ridiculous to me.  We don't care if they kill our food, but we care that they kill our pets.  I know a bunch of people are going to tell me that they think the conditions chickens live under are terrible and they camped out in front of McDonalds to protest the awful treatment of cows and whatever freakin' animal is in a McNugget (it's not a chicken) and so forth.  Please.  How many people in this country really think about the horribly inhumane things that we do, in fact, do to cows and chickens in the name of keeping our fat bellies full?  Well, let's do the math.  There are roughly 300 million people in the United States.  PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), which claims to be world's largest animal rights activist group, has 1.6 million members.  So, considering that while most of the group's membership probably comes from the USA, and that there are other animal rights groups that include people who aren't in PETA as well as individuals who simply aren't affiliated but still are concerned with the rights of animals, I'm going to say that maybe 3% of this country cares about whether or not Bessie the Cow was tortured on her way to becoming a Whopper.  Just a guess.

Marbury says stupid things.  Every now and then, though, guys like him have a point.  We do shoot things all the time, and yes, barbaric as it sounds, dog fighting is a sport; a brutal combat sport to the death.  Marbury seemed to forget that Vick tortured these poor creatures after he made them fight to the death.  The news about him electrocuting, strangling, and drowning dogs was horrific.  So Marbury, in my mind, is not guilty of defending Mike Vick or even defending dog fighting.  Just because he claims to understand that it is a sport doesn't mean it isn't a cruel sport.  Marbury did bring to light the natural intolerance we have for anything negative done to a dog. 

I think some people should think about an issue or a statement before making a judgment about it.  I can say, with no guilt whatsoever, that I am a hypocrite; I condemn Vick for his mistreatment of dogs, but I don't care about how animals are treated.  I see dogs as special, almost human, and so I'm willing to give them special care and treatment amongst other inferior beings that could possibly be my food.  People can do this for many different animals, like cats, some birds, lizards, insects, spiders, or whatever.  But for all you gearing up to tell me how you and your leech have a special bond my dog and I couldn't understand, once again let me point out that most Americans can think of basically two pets; a dog and a cat.  Rodents, lizards, and other less mainstream animals are mainly pets for freaks like my ex-girlfriend, who seriously thought that her ferret "got her."

Remember this: there are people in India who look at our treatment of cows in the same way we see the Indian practice of eating dogs.  So Vick did something illegal.  Pete Rose supposedly did the worst thing someone involved with baseball could do, which is making a few bets while under payroll.  He didn't even cheat.  People love that hooligan.  Michael Irvin, at one point in 1996, actually lived on hookers and cocaine, exclusively.  Scientists are still trying to deduce how his body absorbed water.

Maybe if Michael Vick had, at any point in his career, tried to endear himself to fans across the nation, he could leveraged that in some way.  Vick had the distinction of being one of those rare rookies prophesied to be a game changer.  This happens in basketball far more frequently than in football; LeBron, Ewing, Oden, Olajuwon, and their ilk are more likely to prosper in basketball than in football.

Unlike LeBron, who has managed to craft a brilliant public persona for himself despite being drafted out of high school, Vick has never attempted to win the love of the fans in general.  Sure, there were the Vick apologists who marked out for him every time he did anything well, and defended every screw-up, no matter how significant, he pulled.

For a time, his sheer talent and freshness earned him a very large following across the nation.  He became one of the most overrated players in the league.  People would put Vick in the same company as Brady and Manning just because he could run and was fun to use in Madden.  Martin Lawrence wore his jersey in "Bad Boys 2."  This caused the Vick Haters to come out in full force.

The Vick haters, just as vocal and irrational as the apologists, had a hand in crafting his image; they became incensed that people thought he was so good that they underrated him as a response.  "He can't throw," or, "He throws too hard."  When someone would point out that his receivers sucked, they would always respond, "A good quarterback makes receivers better."  First of all, I think we can all agree that Vick had a higher than average amount of balls dropped on him during his tenure in Atlanta.  Secondly, it is not like those receivers did not know how hard Vick threw the ball.  They did practice together all the time, after all.

So Vick became a polarizing personality mainly due to his various strengths and disadvantages, dividing people simply because some people thought, unfairly, that he was a new god of football, while others unfairly viewed him as a fraud with no real skills beyond speed.  Neither characterization is fair to Vick.  The problem was not his play on the field, or even his conduct off of it (as none of us knew about his dog fighting until now).  His problem was that he did not attempt, despite his various commercials and endorsements, to connect with the fans in any manner.  So, as weird as it sounds, because of that, I can agree with Starbury that it is a little strange that we cannot stand the idea of dogs fighting and dying, but we televise hunting.  It is a little hypocritical.

You think it isn't?  You think that we are appalled by this because of our strong moral sense as a society?  Then stop using pest-control like Raid.  You know what that stuff actually does to insects?  Let me say that it makes drowning and electrocuting dogs look like kindergarten.  Pesticide melts the exoskeleton of insects, causing one of the worst, and most drawn out, deaths that this writer can think of.  Due to the damage to their exoskeleton, the insect or spider becomes paralyzed, and is still alive while they are strangled by their own melting body.  But hey, insects aren't cute like dogs.  It's okay.

Looking at the big picture, Vick is still a jerk.  But Marbury, Portis, and all those guys who simply voiced their opinions on the matter?  They had a point.  We just forgot to notice it because we were to busy jumping on Vick's back.