Commentary on the plea agreement by Atlanta Falcons QB Michael Vick.
If people think that NFL players are all moral degenerates, advertisers won’t pay through the nose to buy 30-second Super Bowl spots. Moreover, parents won’t shell out big bucks for jersies and other official team merchandise representing a player whose values they abhor.
Vick will soon realize why players joke that NFL stands for Not For Long.
When Vicks co-defendants entered their plea agreements on Friday, yet more details came out about the dogs being hanged by the neck until death. It is chilling stuff, so kudos to the media outlets who covered it without vomiting. …
There is something you can do PETA is pushing the NFL to add cruelty to animals?in all its forms?to its “Personal Conduct Policy.” This case has shown that NFL fans are just as disgusted by cruelty to animals as by any of the other antisocial behaviors outlined in the policy.
The Feds may also have obtained a picture of Vick at a dog fight. This evidence meant that Vick was out of options. The prosecutors had proof, beyond a reasonable doubt, of his guilt. The “flipping” of his co-defendants would mean that Vick’s attorneys would have an impossible task “beating up,” through cross-examination, the witnesses who would testify against him. These people were his friends, and individuals he allowed to live at his property. In light of this, if Vick did not accept a plea, he risked additional criminal charges and almost a certain long-term jail sentence.
As difficult as it may be for anyone to give up their liberty (especially a privileged celebrity), Vick’s attorneys likely had to explain, in painful detail, that he was facing a sure conviction. As an attorney, to tell a client that he is going to lose and you can not successfully defend him, is the most difficult task in the practice of law.
It is to early to tell what this does to Vick’s future in the NFL. I think it is safe to say that he will never play for the Falcons again, but I think some team will take a chance on him, assuming he is out of prison in 2009. I am glad he is going to be punished for what he did, and I am glad we will be able to stop hearing about this all the time soon.
However, isn?t Vick just a real-life manifestation of the Really Evil Guy we see in movies all the time? While every film needs a Bad Guy, there?s a certain hierarchy that exists. Bad Guys can kill cops, sidekicks, even their own dimwitted minions for the slightest offense, but the rule of thumb is: hands off the children and animals. When you watch any movie where a family is taken hostage, you can generally assume that little Billy and Fido are going to make it to the end credits in one piece.
Only the Truly Evil, the ones that are truly twisted and maniacal, kill pets and children. Once they send the family pet to the big Petco in the Sky, that?s the filmmaker?s way of letting the audience know that this guy is without a shred of humanity, and is in no way worthy of any shred of empathy or forgiveness. At that point, we want to see this guy killed in the most gruesome and preferably sweetly ironic way possible at the hands of the righteous and undoubtedly bloodied Good Guy. He saves his best one-liner for when he offs this sick son of a bitch.
I hear the battle cry of: “It is my body, it is my property, I can do with it what I want”
from the pro aborts, but the opposite cry from the same person against a person who’s property is a dog. Do they respect the life of a dog more then they respect the life of a human?
My friend Lee Frank made a comment to me after the radio show “Lets talk Frank” I was on this afternoon. He said…..
“If Terry Schiavo was a dolphin or a dog (or a wale)she would still be alive today”
I found it hard to disagree.I started to think.
How many dogs have been killed in dog fights versus how many babies have been killed in abortion clinics or by illegal immigrants. I bet dog deaths pale by comparison. But what do we see on TV every day on about every news channel?
