Monday, August 27, 2007

Michael Vick Finds Jesus: Disgraced QB Still Needs Serious Help

Op-Ed by Kam Williams

"This is going to be a hard-fought trial… Michael Vick is innocent."
Attorney Billy Martin, July 26th

“He would not have been persecuted that much if he had killed somebody… Yes, there are any dog lovers...but there are also many, many other people who just love Mike Vick and these people, too, are significant in numbers."
Atlanta NAACP President R.L. White, August 22nd

“I’ve found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God, and I think that's the right thing to do as of right now."
Michael Vick after entering a guilty plea

After he was named in a very-detailed, 84-count Federal indictment for hosting dogfights in his home, for funding the entire operation, and for executing losing pit bulls by means of lynching, drowning, electrocution and body slams, MichaeI Vick retained a Dream Team of five, very high-priced attorneys, masterminded by Billy Martin, the same hired gun who recently represented former Dick Cheney hatchet man Scooter Libby.
What else would you expect the highest paid football player in the NFL to do, other than mount a million-dollar defense with his liberty, his reputation, his assets, his job and his endorsement deals on the line? And not until after all his co-defendants had already cooperated with the prosecutor and agreed to testify against him, did Vick even consider copping a plea himself.
Then, immediately after admitting to just one count of gambling on dogfights, he staged a well-orchestrated press conference to announce that he’d asked Jesus for forgiveness. Anybody buying this? I hope not. Just as Libby successfully lobbied his Republican base to pressure the President to have his sentence commuted, Michael’s Born-Again gambit is clearly designed to appeal to the African-American soft spot for spirituality.
Personally, I resent the suggestion being circulated by the mainstream press that the black and white communities are monolithic entities which feel very differently about this case. The subtle implication, here, is that African-Americans are feeble-minded and inclined to forgive the mistreatment of man’s best friend, since that’s supposedly not as bad as harming humans.
But it’s obvious that Michael Vick is a very mentally disturbed sadist who got his kicks from killing completely defenseless creatures unable to reason with their master and too innocent to comprehend the reason for his sudden inexplicable cruelty. The only people I can think of who share this kinky inclination are on the long list of serial killers who started out torturing animals, psychopaths with names like Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz and John Wayne Gacy.
Now that the disgraced Atlanta Falcon QB has confessed, the focus has erroneously shifted to how soon he ought to be allowed to return to the league after paying his debt to society. Maybe we all instead ought to pause for a moment of sanity, because the sobering truth is that Michael Vick is still sorely in need of some serious counseling and rehabilitation, not a slick PR campaign selling the notion that his shedding crocodile tears and converting to Christianity on the courthouse steps means that his high crimes and misdemeanors are already behind him.
Forget football and fame, Mike, just focus on trying to save your soul before it’s too late.

Lloyd Kam Williams is an animal lover, syndicated film critic, attorney, and a member of the bar in NJ, NY, CT, PA, MA & US Supreme Court bars.

3 comments:

BeachGaBulldog said...

Fuck off! You are an idiot! Who the hell are you to judge somebody, asshole!

Anonymous said...

Well written article and on point - thanks! I hope Mr. Vick indeed finds "redemption", but the fact remains he admits he activly participated in extreme cruelty to animals... which speaks to a very sick soul.

Animal Chaplain said...

Dear Sly Fox,

I have read things on hundreds of blogs these past two weeks (part of my job researching the subject for a new page on dogfighting) and you are the first and only person to connect dogfhighting with sadism. THANK-YOU! You reall get it!

I watched Vick's public apology with my little son who USED TO wear Michael Vick jerseys to school. It is disturbing to think a certain percentage of the population is honestly going to be swayed by Michael Vick's "enlightenment" carefully crafted by his overpaid attorneys. Call me a cynic, but I don't believe a man who has been allegedly torturing animals since childhood coincidentally has a religious epiphany as a result of getting caught and losing his job. I hope I am wrong.

If there is anything good about the Michael Vick story, it is that there is an emerging increased awareness about animal cruelty and animal fighting. There is so much anger about this issue. If we channel it into a positive direction, hopefully, something good can come of it. However...

I think it is a sad commentary that we, as a culture, are using the Vick story to compare "What's worse?" "What's worse", we ask, "carelessly fathering illegitimate children, or dogfighting?". "Dogfighting or gambling?" "Dogfighting or rape?" "Dogfighting or racism?" "Dogfighting or hateful nationalism?" "Dogfighting or (fill in the blank)....?" The comparisons to dogfighting have been endless.

Dogfighting is one more piece of evidence our country is in need of a spiritual transformation (please note I said spiritual and not necessarily religious). Animals are sentient beings - they feel pain, and they suffer, just like we do. They are not more important, or less important than human beings, but like human beings, they are important, too.

Dogfighting pits one dog against another until one of them dies. The survivor gets his flesh torn off, ears ripped off, eyes pulled out, etc., and the reward for being "a winner" is to writhe in pain until the next fight. Enough said. The pictures make my flesh crawl. The losers are tortured, beaten, starved, electrocuted or drowned. For what? Because these poor creatures were unlucky enough to be born a dog!

Every major faith teaches its followers to be responsible stewards of animals and the Earth. Please help us get the word out that caring for animals, just like caring for people, is an important part of just being a decent person and citizen. If we make this a priority, there will be no more dogfighting horror stories, and no more pointless comparisons of evils. Let us all rise, together, to be better people than we are today, shall we?

Chaplain Nancy Cronk
Founder, www.AnimalChaplains.com