Dog lives, dude. That is what is at debate here, Ever tortured ants with a magnifying glass? "Intentional polonged infliction of pain and death on many lives?" I am guilty as charged... Sorry ants/lives.
This is so ridiculous. I'm sure Vick was crying saying "This hurts me more than it hurts you my love!" as he physically drowned animals, or had their spine snapped, or hung them. The depraved mindset required to do what Vick did is far worse than the ignorance required to drive drunk. Nearly anyone who drinks has been ignorant enough at one point or another to DUI, but the majority of human beings are not sick enough to torture animals, steal other people's animals for training fodder, etc.
Jeez, look at your wording. So misleading. "One bad decision".... couldn't you say that about Vick as well? "One bad decision" to get involved in dog fighting.... I guess his "one bad decision" to get involved with shady folks may or may not have led to death/pain for some animals, huh? "May or may not have led to a death".... there is no maybe in this case, captain. These guys hit and killed people. No takebacks. No erasies. No do-overs. People with families that depended on them died because of their actions, forever changing the outcome and course of several other people's lives. "Pain and death on many lives".... lives? So you're saying animals are the equals of people? The court system doesn't agree with you, and I'm glad it doesn't. Vick got the majority of his punishment handed down for financing an illegal gambling ring across state lines, not dog fighting activities.
Stallworth's crime was a single occurrence on one day, one specific incident. Vick's was a pattern of behavior over several months/years that involved MULTIPLE instances of torture and killing, offering him hundreds, maybe thousands of opportunities to walk away. And he didn't. Actually, there is. No one has been able to prove that his intoxication directly led to the death of Reyes. According to the official accident report, excessive speed was the contributing factor. Look, I'm not saying Stallworth is a saint (he's a Cleveland Brown. Ba-dum-bump! ), just that his crime could have happened to anyone, sober or not. No, I'm not saying they the equal of humans. But they're not disposable, either. They are living, breathing creatures capable of feeling love, pain, etc. To inflict torture on living, feeling creatures over the course of months/years for sadistic entertainment is worse to me than driving 10 mph over the speed limit and accidentally hitting a guy who jumped out into traffic.
You wouldnt allow Vick to be unsupervised around children? lol, overreacting much? And Ray Lewis...how is he a bad human being? You obviously just based your opinion solely on the fact that he was charged with murder...and really didnt know many of the facts around the trial...or the life he has lived since that incident. He has given back a lot to society and he has been nothing but "good". Yes, he plays football like a nut, but to call him a bad human being is almost as silly as not wanting Vick around children. Back on topic, I definitely feel like Vick has not only served his time, but even more than that because of all the money he's lost. He's basically starting from scratch and I absolutely think he should be playing football again. From watching interviews with him and seeing how he is handling everything, I would say that he has definitely matured.
exactly rezdawg the logical leap that he has in evil in his heart is a bit much because he's a dog killer. his values on dogs are different the most people, that has nothing to do with value on people. i don't think vick has ever been accused of assualting someone.
I won't say he has evil in his heart, but torturing animals goes beyond just not valuing them the same as most people. It's a trait common with anti-social personality disorders. FWIW, I have no problem with him being back in the league. He paid his sentence and took a major whipping financially. If his employer is ok with him returning to the business, I am ok with it.
I have to admit that when I was in college...I got two Chinese fighting fish and dropped them into the same bowl to see what would happen.
I'm of the evil heart school...I think I actually said it first. The result of what Stallworth did was worse. People understand drinking and driving because many are similarly irresponsible and share terrible judgment. They don't see a malicious act...they see somebody being dumb and making risky driving decisions. The result was that he killed a man, and even though that wasn't his intent, it was a terrible result...and was very possibly avoidable if Stallworth wasn't drunk driving. Now back onto Vick. I have no qualms with Vick being in society, nor do I oppose him being in the NFL, but I stand by my opinion of his evil heart (past tense). I love dogs and I don't think dogs are equal to humans. I'm fine with eating meat and all that good stuff. I just think the INTENT of what Vick did was worse, even though the RESULTS of what Stallworth did was worse. Now I never was someone who said lock him up and throw away the key. I really don't know what "punishment" he deserved or what's best for society...and I actually think if he was just a participant and not the illegal gambling ring funder and leader, he would have received much less prison time. So the second chance angle I'm referring to is to how fans and society view him as a person. This man was torturing and killing dogs, not for food, but for gambling and entertainment. He electrocuted them, he beat them, and he drowned them. Doing those actions is more than bad judgment, it created a pattern of evil behavior imo. It was wrong. And again, I could care less if he only served 1 month or didn't go bankrupt. What is important to me is if he truly has changed on the inside. I hope he means what he said in this interview: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5240826n And again on the raising culture thing. I'm sure it has had impacts, but Vick is an adult. Honestly, if child soldiers can reform as adults, then so can Vick. He fed his demons instead of trying to fix them. PGabs, the way you're bringing up these raising factors is like a defense of his actions. But if that were true, why didn't they use that in court as a legal defense? Vick could have argued that he didn't know his actions were wrong, that it was how he was raised (he was exposed to dog fighting ever since he was 8). But he didn't argue that. He has admitted he was wrong and that he didn't step up to do the right thing. How is what he did not evil? I'm just glad he got great mentoring and counseling during his prison time. I really hope it changed him.
Oh, and for those interested, there's a long interview of Vick by James Brown on 60 Minutes tonight, following the PGA Championships.
Not at all. People who have proved their depraved indifference to pain and suffering of other creatures don't change. Empathy is developed at a very young age and if you don't have it by the time you are an adult, you never will. And if you don't have empathy for other living things, the only impediment to causing them pain or ignoring their pain is fear of punishment. And as dozens of internet nanny-cam videos show, that isn't a particularly strong impediment. I would describe Vick as a subclinical sociopath. Antisocial Personality Disorder, even nascent and half-realized, is a chronic and incurable condition of the deep structures of the brain. His proven indifference to the suffering of other sentient beings means the symptoms are likely to reemerge at any moment under the right conditions. I think it is likely that Vick would shake a baby if he was alone with it and the baby annoyed him enough, etc.
I get all the emotional judgment, etc, but isn't the issue simple? If someone commits a crime, is convicted, and pays their debt to society, they are free to work again, given that someone will hire them. That's the basic set-up. We don't get to argue whether murder, dog murder, or selling smack get a special status. He did his time. If you owned a football team and didn't want to hire an ex-con, so be it. But I don't think many of us own a football team. And I love dogs and hate what he did. (There is a sleeping puppy on the couch with me right now!) But he did his time.
Sorry, but you are off base here, by a mile. You make some points, but the conclusions you are drawing...you make leaps with your assumptions. Growing up, I had bad experiences with animals...I had a dog chase me and bite me when I got off the school bus when I was 5...Ive had incidences with cats, a horse, haha, and some others. Basically, by the time I was 10-12, I had a certain fear of animals and I remember in middle school, if I was confronted with an animal and it got in my way, I would do something that would make it go away...and many times that meant harming it, whether it was to throw something at it or kick it or something. I had no problems with it at the time...yeah, I felt bad, but it was something that I felt I had to do to prevent anything negative happening towards me. However, I would have NEVER harmed a child or a human being. Years later, I dont have that same hatred towards animals. I would never harm anything that is living. I lived a normal childhood and adult life...im not a sociopath and I dont need to be supervised around kids. In fact, if anything, Im leaning towards specializing in pediatric dentistry. Animals and human beings are separate entities. You cant get that confused. This is a case of Michael Vick maturing at a much later age than society dictates...its not anything more than that. He did something stupid and needed to have everything taken away from him for him to be able to step back and realize how dumb he acted. He was a child. But I think he has grown up. Watch the 60 min interview.
Did you ever tie a rope around a dog's throat? Did you ever pull on it as it fought, vigorously at first, and more and more slowly as it's life ebbed away? Did you ever listen to it whimper and cry, and knowing that it would be dead soon if you did nothing, do nothing? Did you see the fear in its eye slowly give way to emptiness? Did you kick it several times make sure it was dead and then walk away and sleep soundly that night? After it was done, did you then do it several more times? Or, at some point, did you decide that it might be quicker to drown them, or electrocute them, and think of all the ways you could make the murder of underperforming animals more efficient? If not, then it is completely unrelated and not similar. Defending yourself out of fear, and systematic elimination of underperforming "assets" are not the same, any more than a man who shoots a home invader equals a Nazi Death Camp guard. It is a question of biology. Whatever theories you have about maturation, the development of the neural structures to feel empathy doesn't wait. Developing these things later in life is like a 5 foot tall 40 year old man believing they will grow to 7 feet tall. It doesn't happen. There is a point after which you lack the capacity. Ted Bundy was apparently a great interview, too. He seemed very sincere. One of the hallmarks of true sociopaths is a manipulative ability to say the right thing.
If you grew up in an environment where dog fighting occurred, you would have a completely different view of it...and I think you are expecting Vick to share your views. He is from a place where neither of us could even imagine living...and unless you have lived a second in his shoes, its hard to come to the diagnosis you are making. Even now, although I wouldnt harm a living animal, I really dont care for them and hearing about Vick fighting dogs...I really dont care. I just dont see animals nearly on the same level as humans. Otherwise, Id be a vegetarian. You really cant be comparing Ted Bundy to Michael Vick, in any way.
This is awesome logic, because it implies that if I disagree then I must be racially insensitive – a borderline racist. But I didn't grow up in a neighborhood where selling drugs and shooting people were common. By all accounts Vick did (in fact, some reports claim there was no dogfighting at all in Newport News when Vick was young, but nobody disputes the pervasive drug gangs and murder). So, if Vick starts shooting people and selling rock, should I be culturally sensitive and just ignore it? What about Africans who come to the USA and genitally mutilate their daughters, according to the custom of their homeland. Should I look the other way on that too out of respect for their multicultural viewpoint? Hell, the 9/11 hijackers acted in accordance with the customs of jihad among the Salafi in Saudi Arabia. Perhaps we should apologize for being culturally insensitive when we got upset. In some cases, there are absolutes of right or wrong. As a rule, anybody who enjoys operating an abattoir is not a properly functioning human being.
I don't want to make this about dogfighting, because arguing about a sociopathic tendency seems irrelevant if the laws of a land allow someone to go free after they've done their time. Ottomaton, if you ever buy an NFL franchise, don't hire Michael Vick or anyone else involved who's done time for dogfighting. Now, as an aside, if everyone involved in dogfighting is a sociopath (and while I don't agree, I see your reasoning and sympathize with it), then the following regions are/were just brimming with sociopaths everywhere you look: Russia South Africa Argentina Brazil Afghanistan Samurai era in Japan pre 1835 planet Earth (first laws against dogfighting, in England, 1835, I believe) Oh well, guess I've made it about dogfighting afterall, even though I think that's irrelevant here.
