Is Michael Vick really the Eichmann of the kennels?

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/zirin08242007.html

August 24, 2007

Why Michael Vick is Not a Fascist
Inching Toward Insanity
By DAVE ZIRIN

Let's get this out of the way early: I don't support the fighting of dogs. I am not sitting here in a Michael Vick jersey snacking on Labrador fajitas thinking that his 12 month plea bargain is the greatest injustice since Sacco and Vanzetti. Please don't send me emails saying that I hate dogs. Please don't write that I am a "supporter" of Michael Vick, whatever the hell that means. I don't love dogs. I don't hate dogs. I will say I'm not a vegetarian. I love a good haggis. I gargle with gravy. I think short ribs are a "side." None of that means I hate dogs or think Vick is some kind of political prisoner. Like many, I eat meat, abhor dog fighting, and am comfortable with that hypocrisy,

But all that said--now that we have gorged on disclaimers--I find the reaction to this entire dog fighting case to be a frightening example of the worst kind of group-think: an unreflective mob-mentality run amok. I will not dwell on the various Internet postings that call for Vick to be lynched, beaten, or put in a phone booth with pit bulls. In less than five seconds of mouse-work, you too can buy a "Save a Pit Bull & Neuter Vick" T-shirt. They are easy enough to find since he Internet has always proven comfortable quarters for enterprising bottom feeding parasites.

I will also not harp on the sundry sports columnists using this opportunity to cluck about black athletes, "hip hop gangsta" culture, and what happens when you hold onto your "boyz." I think they speak for themselves. They are as predictable as a setting sun, their arguments and prose so mundane one wonders if they have a computer program where they enter key words like "gangsta", "hip hop", and "boyz" and just watch as the graphs spew themselves.

And I certainly do not wish to draw any unnecessary attention to Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia and the bizarre Senate floor speech in which he condemned Michael Vick to Hades, saying, "I am confident that the hottest places in Hell are reserved for the souls of sick and brutal people who hold God's creatures in such brutal and cruel contempt!" I am also way too classy to may hay out of the fact that Byrd's "youthful indiscretion" was joining the Ku Klux Klan, a group that used dogs on black people the same way people want dogs used on Mr. Vick.

There is simply no need to take aim at these obvious targets when our best sports columnists ­ people to treasure in these fetid waters ­ decide to ride the wave.

Such a writer is Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post. On Thursday she wrote, "If an animal didn't perform well enough, if it wasn't champion enough, if it was in Vick's judgment flawed, he strangled it, drowned it, electrocuted it or beat it to death on the ground. Vick and his pals deliberately enslaved and tormented weaker creatures, and killed those they considered inferior. The dogs had faces and voices that would have eloquently expressed their agony, and Vick hurt them anyway, repeatedly. The crimes may have been committed against canines, but at issue is basic humanity. Commit those crimes against people, and the words we'd use for it are fascism, and genocide. Don't kid yourself: The people who are so angry at Vick are angry for all the right reasons."

[DS1]

1. More like a Leona Helmsley of kennels

[chelsea0011]

2. I don't think he was running what is traditionally referred to as a kennel.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Do we really need to check-off the actual crimes of fascism from the last century?

http://www.counterpunch.org/zirin08242007.html


All that said, the part of Jenkins' piece ­ and almost all the writing on this subject ­ is the way dogs have been so thoroughly anthropomorphized. Faces? Language? Enslavement? FASCISM? Do we really need to check-off the actual crimes of fascism from the last century? Is Michael Vick really the Eichmann of the kennels? Is Jenkins' prose more insulting to Vick or the people who actually had relatives die at the hands of Hitler and company? Does this discourse really make us smarter, or just more enraged?



How can we rally for the pit bull when one million Iraqis are dead and the US media barely yawns? How can we humanize dogs with such piety as Texas puts Kenneth Foster to death next week ­ puts him down like a dog for a murder all sides agree he didn't commit? How can we imbue dogs with "language" when the actual words of those calling for help in HIV ravaged Africa are being ignored by our government? How can we cheer violent sports, ignoring ­ or even celebrating - the mutilation of people's faces and voices, and weep over the pit bulls?

[MISSDem]

4. How come I can't be "for" all of the things on your list

and still think that Michael Vick is the scum of the earth and should go to prison for 30 years? In fact, that is the case. I moan and cry over all of the things you mentioned but I still think that the defenseless animals deserve a voice when they have none of their own. Do you think they do not feel pain? Are they not God's creations just like you and I are? Maybe they are an incarnation of buddha. Get real!

[WildEyedLiberal]

5. Agreed - the attempt to portray every "bad" thing as comparable to the Holocaust is insulting

Especially when it's not humans being used in the comparison. I think what Vick did is vile and he should be punished and I believe animals should be treated humanely, but comparing any level of animal suffering to the Holocaust is just tacky and insensitive - especially when Vick's animal victims maybe number in the hundreds, versus the millions of PEOPLE wiped out by Hitler, Eichmann, etc.

[seemslikeadream]

7. It's just not the comparing

It's the TIME on M$M to it in realtion to the coverage of what is happening in Iraq.

[WildEyedLiberal]

8. true n/t

[anniebelle]

9. They'd be covering more important stuff like Paris and Britney

and stuff like that, you mean? They're so great about covering the real events of the day, I don't think Vick's contribution has anything to do with them not covering Iraq.

[BuyingThyme]

6. Mengele.