The NFL season has begun, and I know who I am rooting for.
Michael Vick.
Once the highest-paid and perhaps most dynamic player in professional football, Vick has paid one of the highest prices in the history of animal cruelty. And he is still paying.
Now working as a gadget guy and backup quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, Vick has a target on his back and a price on his head — a Philadelphia animal-rescue group will make a donation every time Vick is tackled.
Nice. I guess animal loving doesn’t extend to human beings.
Michael Vick and some of his no-good buddies and hangers-on were caught two years ago operating a dog-fighting business and engaging in remarkable cruelty to those dogs who lost or wouldn’t fight. It was not only illegal, it was indefensible.
But the punishment did not fit the crime. Vick spent 18 months in Leavenworth prison. (I am surprised they didn’t reopen Alcatraz for him.) He worked as a janitor for 12 cents an hour.
He not only lost his $130 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons, he was forced to repay $6.5 million he’d already received. Of course, he lost all of his endorsement contracts. He was required to pay more than $1 million for the rehabilitation of the dogs that were rescued.
He was forced into bankruptcy with $16 million in debts and was stripped of his homes, cars, and boats — permitted to keep only a pickup truck and a house in his hometown of Hampton, Va. I can only imagine what his lawyers’ bills look like.
But this isn’t about the money. Vick has a chance to make $7 million with the Eagles, which is a bigger payday than any other ex-con can hope for.
This is about the humiliating tour of self-flagellation he has been forced to walk, and will continue to walk, if the Humane Society bullies have anything to say about it.
Don’t misunderstand me. I love dogs. Ask Amber, Lulu, and Sugar. But I love human beings more, and what Vick is being required to endure is its own brand of cruelty. People with houses full of filthy, flea-bitten dogs and cats or farms with starving horses generally pay nothing close to the price Vick has paid, in freedom, money, or reputation.
And this country is completely schizophrenic in its treatment of animals. Not only do we eat them, we treat them with inhumanity before we do. And we hunt them for sport. There was a lottery for the pleasure of killing bears, for heaven’s sake. The winners celebrated their good fortune. The bears? Not so much.
Dogs, unlike cows, pigs, chickens, and deer, had the good fortune to respond to domestication centuries ago and for that reason we label them friends, apparently in better standing than the wives, girlfriends, or random hotel workers and night-clubbers who happen to get in the way of other sports stars.
For Michael Vick’s dogs, the suffering ended in death or rescue. I don’t think it is ever going to end for this man.
Susan Reimer is a columnist for the Baltimore Sun. A version of this commentary originally appeared on Sept. 15.
