ESPN will air a SportsCenter Special titled “The Vick Divide” on Tuesday, September 25. The ninety-minute special will “examine the repercussions of the story that shocked the city and the nation.” The repercussion of note will be the racial effect, much ballyhooed during the Vick case. Among the guests will be local Atlanta personalities Neal Boortz and Terrence Moore. The show will be hosted by Bob Ley.
What more can be said about the Michael Vick case? The story was covered ad nauseum during the summer, and most talk about the racial and cultural dynamics of the case was vapid at best, and insulting at worst. Why air ninety minutes one pundit screaming that race has nothing to do with a story that has incited people to call for a man to be murdered by hanging — and has drawn absolutely heinous comments on the internet — while another pundit protests that animal cruelty is a sport? Why give ninety more minutes to the amateur sociologists who have now connected dogfighting exclusively with hip-hop culture?
Why allow talking heads to have ninety more minutes to say the same things everyone heard them say over the summer? Everybody knows where Neal Boortz is coming from; he once called African American congresswoman Cynthia McKinney a “ghetto slut” and “ghetto trash“.
Maybe ESPN will trot out Stephon Marbury just so everyone can marvel at his ignorance, or maybe Mike Celizic so he can talk about how “keeping it real” caused Vick’s demise. Maybe the network could even call up Gary Thorne, who could indict the entire NFL as America’s “most expensive and dangerous gang”, as he so odiously characterized the NBA three years ago. Or better yet, Frasier writer Ken Levine, who used the John Amaechi controversy in February to call NBA players at large “mean, arrogant, scary looking, tattooed, prison inmates. Not exactly All-American role models unless you’re a gang member or skinhead. In interviews these players often come off sounding like Pogo.”
The more incendiary, the better. And if you can completely avoid any examination of the actual issues at hand, that’s great too. Instead of examining the culture of dogfighting and animal cruelty at large, call it a sport — or even better, say it’s exclusive to those scary rappers and hip-hoppers. Instead of examining why one man’s criminal activity is an indictment on an entire race of people, say it’s not about race and write off anyone who thinks it is as defending the criminal.
As long as you can get people riled up, and to their computers, and to their television sets, you’ve done a good job. Anyone looking for intelligent discourse surrounding the racial and cultural dynamics of the “Vick divide” may prefer having their television sets off from 6:00 to 7:30 that night.
