Would President Obama call the boss of a man who tortured his dog to death to congratulate him for giving the torturer a second chance?
Tags: real life
Would President Obama call the boss of a man who tortured his dog to death to congratulate him for giving the torturer a second chance?
Tags: real life
I understand and share your revulsion in regards to the original crime, but I think the issue at hand is whether or not someone who fulfills their sentence can ever truly be rehabilitated. You can ask – was Vick’s sentence laughably meager, considering the severity of his crimes? Yes, certainly. But he *did* fulfill his sentence, and no matter how grievous the original crime, if a person has served their time I think we – we as a society, not we as individuals – we have to give the system in this instance the benefit of the doubt. Because otherwise – what? Are we going to say that some crimes are so grievous that no rehabilitation is possible? We have the death penalty and life without possibility of parole – are we going to expand the list of crimes that qualify for these penalties?
I’m not arguing *for* VIck – as I implied above, I think the severity of his crimes was grossly disproportionate to the sentence he served. But the fact remains – he *did* serve his sentence, and unless and until he proves otherwise, we have to acknowledge that he has paid the debt levied against him by society.
Was the President right to single Vick out like this? Probably not. But I do think that the President was right if he was trying to cast a light on the very real plight of ex-cons who face a sharp uphill battle when they hit the streets. Was Michael Vick ever really in danger of becoming a recidivist and sliding back into a life of petty crime and drug use? Probably not. But there are enough people who are in real danger of doing that every day that I think it’s important to stand on the principle that people who leave prison need to be re-embraced by society in order to enable them to create stable and productive futures.
The real fight is to make the penalties against animal abuse far steeper.
Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by “rehabilitated”.
Has he been rehabilitated into someone who probably won’t kill more dogs (good citizen)? Probably.
Is he actually no longer a sick, repulsive piece of shit (good person)? I really, really doubt it.
If you are an adult who needs to be caught and punished to figure out that systematically torturing and killing dogs…if doing it ONCE doesn’t teach you something…no. You’re gone as a person.
Tim, I hear everything you’re saying, I really do. But there are literally millions of ex-cons in this country who didn’t torture dogs to death, and there are ones who did who actually were convicted and served their time for doing so, rather than bargaining down to the lesser crime of dogfighting, which I believe is what happened in Vick’s case, and there are ones who aren’t multi-millionaire NFL quarterbacks who will die richer than many millions of those other ex-cons will ever get put together. There just seem to me to be many, many, many, many, many ways for the President to use either his bully pulpit or his executive powers to do something about the plight of convicts and ex-cons, from his powers of commutation and pardoning to pushing to give the vote to felons to declaring a drug-war ceasefire to calling up some dude who runs an auto body shop and congratulating HIM for hiring a guy who sold meth for a while but cleaned up. As it stands he made just as big a statement about the conduct we owe animals as he did about the plight of ex-cons. And given the behavior of most people in this country and around the world, it’s not an inaccurate statement, but it still makes my fucking stomach turn.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world where nay of those things are likely to happen – and I’ll add another, a national push for toughened animal abuse laws. The animals rights activists have really done a great job of entirely discrediting the idea of animal rights, so that there is simply no way an active politician can even broach the subject. OBVIOUSLY the President could have done a better job doing any of a number of things better but – any of those things would have made him look soft on crime, or soft on drugs, or worse, absolutely invisible. I mean, yeah, it’d be awesome if real-world small business and corporate employers got props for hiring cons, but no one pays attention unless the con in question is a millionaire athlete (who, we all know, was never in any danger of going hungry and reverting to selling crack / selling meth / boosting cars because he couldn’t get a job out of the pen). As a gesture it was pretty tepid, but it was still a rare gesture to an issue which is all but invisible.
Yeah, it says some really filthy things about the way we treat animals – I am not trying to, cannot, would not want to dispute your point there.
None of this would happen if the man couldn’t throw a ball (or does he catch a ball? I don’t even know). The only REAL solution to this is, as I’ve said before, the end of major league corporate-sponsored athletic teams, but THAT’S about as likely to happen as serious drug law reform.
I’m with O’Neil on this one. I can think of a pair of individuals who harmed/killed people I love/loved that have the outlines of normal lives again, not what I’d personally vote for given a smorgasbord of outcomes but I understand and support the principle behind their return to citizenship.
I think Sean’s strongest indictment is that President Obama’s not consistently principled and outspoken on all elements of this specific issue.
I also further support Tim’s point of view in that the US seems to be slipping more deeply into ingrained notions of dual citizenship and I’d be tempted to throw any example into that process’ gears I could if I thought it might slow it down.
I think it comes down to what you feel is a more resonant outcome to what Obama did here: Sending the message that ex-convicts deserve a second chance, or sending the message that cruelty to animals isn’t a big deal to the point where the President himself will give you a thumbs up for moving on with your life. Or sending a third message, which is that if you’re rich and famous enough it doesn’t really matter what you do. Personally I can’t hear message #1 over the din of messages #2 and #3.
It’s obviously difficult for me to remove my extreme passion about this subject from the equation, but in all honesty I think that Vick’s great wealth and fame drown out the ex-con element and confuse the issue regardless of the underlying offense. Convicted rapist Mike Tyson had a beloved cameo in a hit comedy, convicted rapist Roman Polanski wins Oscars, admitted war criminals Dick Cheney and George W. Bush roam around bragging about it—-Tom’s “dual citizenship” cuts both ways.
I got about 3 words into Tim’s response before my brain hit the boring wall doing maximum snoooooozzzzeage in a 5 MPH zone. blah blah blah…Michael Vick should be working at Dairy Queen (if he’s lucky), and yet he gets all this positive attention still. I never want to hear the words “Michael Vick” again. I don’t care how fucking “talented” you are at a made up thing (like football)…fuck you for killing dogs. I repeat: FUCK. YOU. FOR. PROFITING. OFF. AN. ANIMAL’S. FUCKING. DEATH.
I have to pause now for commercial. Here’s a word from Tim O’ Neil:
“I’m not arguing *for* VIck – as I implied above, I think the severity of his crimes was grossly disproportionate to the sentence he served. But the fact remains – he *did* serve his sentence, and unless and until he proves otherwise, we have to acknowledge that he has paid the debt levied against him by society.”
Ok, annnnnd we’re back! That commercial was brought to you by “Cambpell’s FuckStick Soup,” and funded by FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU Chowder.
Here’s the thing. He paid his debt and served his sentence in a day and age that rewards celebrity assholes and grants them amnesty for just about fucking anything. Look at the people making money off of Michael Vick now. People are getting rich off of him. Michael Vick is getting rich off of Michael Vick. Let me ask you something: if I fuck a kid in the ass, and apologize, and do 3 months time, and Baby’s R Us gives me an endorsement deal, are we all good here? It looks like we just might be.
Sorry. That was pretty harsh. I’m sure you’re a nice fellow, Tim. This caught me at a bad time, and you didn’t deserve all that. Unless you did, then PHOOEY!
Good man.