Pundits, man your stations. It seems that the Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson yipped that Eagles quarterback Michael Vick should have been executed three years ago when convicted on dog-fighting charges.
Many are now getting hot and bothered expressing shock that Carlson would actually call for Vick's execution -- a tad extreme even for Fox.
Frankly I was shocked that Carlson, humiliated so thoroughly by Jon Stewart many years ago, still is on the air. The guy has been on more canceled programs than Jennifer Love Hewitt.
In full, the paunchy, lipless, chinless, porcelain man-boy with the ubiquitous bow-tie said, "I'm a Christian, I've made mistakes myself, I believe fervently in second chances. But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should've been executed for that."
I know it's hardly news for a Murdoch-owned, right-wing shock jock to say something shocking. It's like receiving word of a celebrity sex tape. The thrill is gone. I am also well aware that in the current media set up, it's Carlson's job to say something utterly outrageous and the job of people like myself to respond. We make statements about Carlson's peculiar brand of bloodthirsty Christianity. Maybe we point out how easy it is for Carlson to call for the death of an African-American athlete, always the low-hanging fruit for his race-baiting ilk.
We bat this particular ball back and forth like -- as one writer once said to me -- "two hookers working opposite sides of the street." The ensuing hothouse debate becomes an entertainment option for people soured on American Idol.
But there is actually a serious problem with this kind of 24-hour cable performance art when the subject is Michael Vick. It's that pesky entity pecking at the window of reality television known as "reality."
Dostoevsky said famously,"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." By that standard, the United States exists in a barbaric state. Enter a prison -- something I sincerely doubt Carlson has ever done -- and you see the daily, dreary reality for the 2.3 million people who live behind bars. In what's become the largest prison system on earth -- take that China! -- you see the herded poor stacked on top of one another. You see a world disproportionately black and brown with African-American men six times as likely to go to prison as whites, with one in nine black men between 20-34 living in a state of incarceration.
It's a country that through its addiction to privatized prisons and "tough on crime" legislation, has created what writer Michelle Alexander's calls "The New Jim Crow." In Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness she details the way the prison system robs its present and past and even future inhabitants of voting rights, citizenship, and any semblance of political power. She points that the United States now imprisons a higher percentage of black men than South Africa at the height of apartheid. As she writes:
Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.
Michael Vick, whether he likes it or not, is humanizing the struggle to find redemption after serving time in a maximum security prison. After all, if a star quarterback doing hours of community surface can't regain a foothold in society, who could? Tucker Carlson's efforts to dehumanize Vick and paint him as a disposable, killable individual cuts in a way that transcends the idiocy of Murdoch's 50-state southern strategy of dimples and dog whistles. I'd love for Carlson to spend even a week in Leavenworth and then make an effort to rebuild his nerfy little life. Then we'd see how a man without callouses could be so callous. This is why Michael Vick's story matters, and really another example -- as if more were needed -- of how Fox News has become a cancerous boil on the political soul of this country.
First posted at thenation.com.
Follow Dave Zirin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/edgeofsports
Now, let the fact that he is millions of dollars in debt come into the light.
That is one of the reasons he is playing again, to pay off debts. It seems to me that when he pays up the debts, his football years will be over. Please try to relate to Vick's problem, if he quits he's done, if he plays and pays, he's done a little better. Vick is in a no-win situation...
No one is letting Vick redeem himself, they are allowing him to play to pay things off.
Vick will see very little for his efforts and it's sad to see this play out on a national level...
Prison has robbed him and now the NFL is using him up as well.
Here's more:
http://chrisdurant2000.wordpress.com/2011/01/02/michael-vick-was-wrongly-convicted/
Sure... Huckabee also gave Maurice Clemmons a pardon after many felony conviction s because he also believed in "rehabilit ation" and according to Huckabee this guy had been given a "harsh and unfair sentence" because he was poor, young and black. Awwww.... poor guy! such injustice! . AND WHAT HAPPENED NEXT...? HE KILLED 4 POLICE OFFICERS! Some people just don't rehabilita te and we have to measure and be able to really discern with more caution and scrutiny if people are truly rehabilita ted. Vick is not sorry, he's only sorry he got caught. And the people who wanna give him a second chance only want to do it because he makes them money.
Let's hope Vick is not another Clemmons.
Why don't we give some or our most serious convicted murderers a second chance for that matter? They certainly has served his sentence. Is he not worthy of the same rehabilita tion rights?
Sure... Huckabee also gave Maurice Clemmons a pardon after many felony conviction s because he also believed in "rehabilit ation" and according to Huckabee this guy had been given a "harsh and unfair sentence" because he was poor, young and black. Awwww.... poor guy! such injustice! . AND WHAT HAPPENED NEXT...? HE KILLED 4 POLICE OFFICERS! Some people just don't rehabilita te and we have to measure and be able to really discern with more caution and scrutiny if people are truly rehabilita ted. Vick is not sorry, he's only sorry he got caught. And the people who wanna give him a second chance only want to do it because he makes them money.
Let's hope Vick is not another Clemmons.
Why don't we give Manson a second chance for that matter? He certainly has served his sentence. Is he not worthy of the same rehabilita tion rights?
And as far as your above annalogy... really poor one!
And I thought that Mr. Vick's shed tears were crocodillian in nature.
But, I must admit, he did his time as sentenced in Federal Court...not in The Court of Public Opinion.
Now, Mr. Vick is back at what he loves to do.
And in a way, so is Tucker Carlson...
a two-bit weenie who wouldn't last two weeks in prison before becoming somebody's punk.
For his supper, he'll sing the songs written by Roger Ailes, including an executioner's ditty calling for the blood-sacrifice of Michael Vick on the Altar of Justice.
And this is what Mr. Carlson loves to do.
One cannot compare each man to the other...except to say that both are human males.
And that perfection is best left to beings of a Higher calling.
Call them on their faults, when required, but remember--
They both put their slacks on the same way...'cos they share the same biology.
And if you are wondering who the real victims truly are?
They have four legs, go "woof," and, if not trained for evil...are happy-go-lucky lovebugs!
If tears need be shed, let it be for them!
--RKJ
You've obviously never been to many prisons yourself. Everyone I know who's gone to prison has come out better than they went in. Being off of drugs and alcohol for an extended period of time and having access to healthcare and exercise facilities tends to have that effect. Not quite what i'd call dreary.
Unless yer killing an animal for food, clothing, or self defense, these rich white guys should be "executed" also!!!
You sure do set the bar low.
We like this idea, because it is a story book tale of redemption. 1-Person is good at something 2-Person does something bad 3-Person goes to jail or whatever 4-Person gets out and works hard to get back what they lost 5-Person goes back to doing well what they did before 6-Everyone feels good. That is all that this is. Vick still has the same talent he had before he went to jail, and is using that talent again. If Vick keeps his nose clean, great. But this is only redemption because he is good, if he threw 1 TD and 10 interceptions, there would be no story of redemption, even if he was a changed person.
You nailed it.
the ASPCA story is interesting because it also calls out that there are all types of people who like this sport from all communities and it is clearly more pervasive so it clearly can't be called the gateway to serial killing or we would have literally hundreds of thousands of serial killers on the streets and we plainly do not.
I think it is reprehensible, but for you out there claiming the dogs are innocent belies the fact that these particular breeds have been bred for hundreds of years by humans to fight and only recently have we decided it is inhumane . . .
At this point, the bully breeds were bred 300 years ago for the pit . . there is nothing to do make them fit .. they have a gear for aggression that other breeds don't have . . because of this breeding for this aggressive trait . . so at this point the damage is done .. . yes all dogs will bite . . but bullies won't back off when the establish dominance. Go read the post of the man with the pit bull puppy . . they just have an extra gear for aggression . . you would have to spend a couple hundred years of breeding to get dogs like mine to be that angry . .
I'm not advocating killing them all . . but I'm saying dogs that have been bred to be super aggressive didn't just start and now we have these super aggressive dogs around . .whether someone goads them to fight . .they want to fight . they will fight, regardless of the humans around them . .my dog won't, ever unless for protection and once he has established dominance he backs off . .pits won't do that.